


Blessings From Sins: The Return

by DarthSuki



Series: Blessings From Sins [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, It does actually get better believe me, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:12:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthSuki/pseuds/DarthSuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki is pregnant, coming back as an exile in chains from the final events from the Avengers movie. Nobody seems to know about his ongoing pregnancy, nor the father of the child. Loki doesn't know how to handle it, from bearing the child, to his constant thoughts that he will be killed, surely, for the crimes he had committed.</p><p>But what is he to do when he's welcomed back home with open arms? What if, although still at fault for the horrors he had done in childish vengeance, his old friends, his family, still missed him so incredibly? Would Loki have the growing courage to speak of the unborn child? And, above all else, would he manage to fix the broken bond and heart he once had with not only Thor, but with himself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> DEANON FROM NORSEKINKMEME [HERE](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/8195.html?thread=17087747)
> 
>  
> 
> "...So Loki is pregnant during the Avengers, he either be just a little while along (not far along to show) or covering it up with his magic. Thor realizes this while he and Loki are fighting on Stark Tower, yes, *that* scene. I'd like a major freakout from Thor and a meltdown from Loki. 
> 
>  
> 
> Also, Clint could of told the other Avengers this already before the fight. Possibly Loki made mind controlled Clint help him around since he was weak, and Clint still remembered this after Natasha brought him back. "

The trip had been in silence. Utter silence. It was as if the moment that the metallic piece had been so roughly wrapped around his mouth, Loki lost the sense of all other sounds that life could make. He didn't bother to make so much as a mumble or moan beneath the mask, it clinging over his lips and biting at his tongue. He knew that his older brother wouldn't so much as glare at him if he even attempted a sound. In fact, Thor hadn't seemed to acknowledge Loki's simple existence.

Not after what had happened; Thor would never look at him the same way, nobody ever would. Loki was sure that he was as good as dead the moment he stepped back home, back to THOR'S home. Loki couldn't consider such a place as Asgard his home anymore. He wasn't an Asgardian, so why need he bother? He wasn't going to get a warm welcome, or pulled into the happy arms of a weeping, worried mother like Thor was, so was there anything to bother for in such a horrid, miserable sentiment? It was something that Loki didn't want to feel anyways; it would have only added emotional baggage that he had long since taught himself to hate, manage to drag him into even greater throes of anger.

The demigod tried to keep his mind from the clinking of the shackles around his wrists, rubbing his skin raw and painfully red the more he tried to move, or his taking step after step down the hallways of the main throne to their-

Thor's…father. Loki could feel the gaze upon his body as he approached the throne, boring deep into his very soul. He could feel the judgment pressing down upon him, the air getting thick and hard to swallow.

Loki didn't even try to deny anything as Odin told him of his war accusations, listing them one after another in growing tension of the room, of the few who had heard whispers of his (shameful) return to Asgard and wanted to hear of his fate firsthand. Would Odin sentence his own son to death? The odds were certainly there, placed again him like any other war criminal that had been tried in centuries past before. But would he place such a severe punishment upon his own son?

No. Not his son. Loki doubted that the All-Father even dared to think such a thing anymore, let alone any other soul in the room with the three of them. Through what had happened over the past few years, it would have been a surprise if Odin still saw Loki as anything other than a criminal, an outcast. Assuredly, Loki was little more than that pitiful little baby he had taken so many years ago, the son of his enemy growing up in his own household.

Loki tried to ignore all the looks of worry and joy that fell upon the man accompanying him. Thor was washed in the arms of his friends and family, while Loki was only cast to stand all alone, his arms bound and his mouth covered with a rough, painful metal mask to keep him silent. He tried to push it all out, the sounds, the joy, the happiness.

All the smiles and tears and hugs and shouts and laughter and-

The man gasps in a breath of air as the memory, still vivid and fresh, begins to fade from his vision.

He's still in his cell, staring down upon the cold floor with lifeless eyes, even as the memory plays over and over again. The mask is still painfully wrapped over his mouth, though Loki has gotten a tad bit more used to how it seemed to cut into his cheeks, the leather strap at least positioned low enough then that it doesn't pull as badly anymore upon the metal.

Loki sighs and blinks, unable to think anything further than Thor's face as he left him in the cell, the thunder god watching as Loki stumbled helplessly into the room after being so roughly pushed in. The door had then shut loudly just before the younger had fallen onto the floor, like the final crack of the whip against the already bloody and battered back that was his fate. That was it. There was-and still is- nothing that Loki could/can hope to do in order to help himself.

Magic is useless. Loki has tried, failing each time, to conjure something or another that will get him free from the hopeless prison he resides in. Nothing works. He cannot break the shackles over his wrists, for they merely seem to drain him of any energy he musters up against them. The mouth piece is even harder, almost as if it was created from the power of All-Father himself. Let the entire universe be damned then, Loki probably wouldn't have cared any less.

Why wasn't he dead yet? All-Father certainly should have come to a conclusion by now, the painfully obvious conclusion that the monster he had once lied to call a son was worth nothing more than the sentence of death. He should have already mused upon that horribly biased mind of his, thinking of the perfect way to rid Asgard and beyond of the tyranny that had been Loki.

Surely that was how things were working; surely that was how things would always be.

Loki looks towards death with nothing but blank, unfocusing eyes. Staring down the mere knowledge that death was soon to befall upon him, soon to take him clean from the world and its cold betrayal against him and everything he tried to stand for; he had tried to fix and appeal for the smallest sense of belonging, and even that had failed with (mostly) meaningless bloodshed and pain.

He can already see the counsel of warriors and elders Odin has surely called upon, letting their minds all think of the oh so colorful ways that they could push the lesser god into a painful death.

They will slice his head off (But then Loki reprimands his thoughts; that is much too merciful). Maybe they will take their time in ripping out his heart muscle by muscle, letting the blood drip down his pale skin and color the floor with the undying sin he fully knew that he had committed. Then that idea dies as well, proving to be far too messy than what Odin would seemingly ever want for. Will they starve him? Will they cut him, little by little, until his body could take not another painful tear of skin so much that he was positively red and blistering with the open, infected sores of every life he had taken?

What will they do?

Loki presses the thoughts from his brain, no matter how much he truly deserved to have them plaguing his mind so relentlessly. They are like flies, buzzing just next to his ear in such a way that he cannot shake them away. He can ignore them and continue trying to stare upon the wall opposite him within the darkened room, but they do not leave him. Death. His death. It is too much to think about, too much to ponder and muse upon.

He lays a gentle hand down upon his belly, faintly wincing upon the sting that befalls around his wrist at the protest and jaunting of the metal cuff around it. The skin is almost broken from where he had pulled at the restraints, instead simply a purple mess of bruises ringing around where the metal sits. But the god pays little attention to the pain in his limbs as he does the pain at against his bottom lip. He's biting it, his teeth clamping down so hard against the flesh that it almost breaks through the very skin.

His belly.

He absently rubs his thumbs against it, feeling the gentle rumble of something in return. There is but a small simmer of magic, the gentle thrum of life burning inside of him. Ah yes, he is getting closer, day by day, closer to what he knew would never really come.

It would never get a moment to see the sunshine, never a moment to breath in the fresh, clear air of the world.

It's not his life that he's most worried about, and that alone is the most surprising to the trickster. There was a time when Loki was truly selfish, caring only for himself and his own revenge upon those who wronged him. But…but now, it is different. Because it is no longer about his own life. He couldn't afford to be so selfish when there was something so innocent, so beautiful growing within him.

He recalled the cold, dreadful loneliness. He remembered being ready to finish it all, even if it had to come to his own end.

So close…on the brink of death, of… darkness.

Then he was promised with the power, the septor, everything he needed to seek the vengeful hate he craved, the angry dispute of anger and rage that still numbly battles within the god's heart. It was all for what had happened. Betrayal still courses through his veins to the very moment, cursing Loki into a neverending portal of darkness. And yet, despite the abyss of blood, death and sin that Loki had carved for his own soul, he knew he could not give up, roll over, and die.

He'd be killing his baby.

The only one he wants as much as a mother should have. He craves and yearns to hold it within his gentle arms, no matter if its birth will most likely be in a dark, cramped cell. He only wants to love his child. Only wants it to live, even if he has to die.

That's all Loki wants now. Well, all that his mind can bare to hope for. Everything else is mere childish prayer, something one was always told so they would be good and behaved, but always ripped clean from their very hands until they were bloodied with reality and truth.

So, to keep his heart from breaking any further than it already was, Loki hopes to keep his child safe at the very least. Maybe Odin will have mercy upon the child.

Yes. Mercy. While he himself is a monster in every way, the child is innocent. Not even Odin would sentence an unborn child to death at the expense of his parent's crimes.

Loki leans back against the cold wall and sighs deeply, unable to keep his eyes open for very much longer. It was getting so tiresome to sit there and think of nothing but his death. He decides that he'll ask the next guard to enter the room (in whatever way he can, mouth still covered by the metal piece) if by some streak of mercy, he may have an audience with Odin.

It was going to be shameful, going to be the end of any bit of dignity that Loki still manages to keep with himself, but Loki wasn't about to kill his child for the sake of mere pride alone. Not this child, the one that….meant far too much to him to allow to die.

Loki loves it far too much, and it is barely a little fetus yet. Yes, so tiny, so fragile…. It brings a sudden stream of tears down Loki's face as he thinks further on the subject. No. NO. NO!

He cannot think of it. Cannot. Loki didn't want to be pressed into a broken, sobbing mess yet again that night. The past is just that, the past. Nobody can change what has happened. Though, quite frankly, Loki isn't even sure that he wants to change what has occurred in the past. It is both a horrible curse, but is also the most wonderful blessing he has ever felt before. And it proves to make his emotions run that much more in his growing agony.

Loki barely recalls falling into a fitful sleep, his hand rubbing still upon his belly before succumbing to the constant nightmares of wailing death and lost memories.

He would fight his emotions and mistakes on yet another day.


	2. Chapter 2

The nights turned to days, leaving the lithe form of the former trickster in a constant haze of question when one day ended and when one began. Sleep separated one from the other- usually- though occasionally the being’s boredom was quelled by the infrequent curious guard at the door, to whom Loki would find slight interest in speaking with (some were more interesting than others). For the most part, he had started to count the time he had been in the cell-

Well, maybe that wasn’t the right word to call it any longer. Loki had been moved from room to room so often. Little logic denoted the changes, every move from one room to the next seeming just a step up of some small little thing that made it more bearable. Where the first cell he was tossed in had nothing to call furniture, the second had a cot. The third then had a bed, and the fourth-the one he is currently in now-could almost be akin to that of a fairly humble room. There was a bed to sleep on, and a table with several books to read.

Considering he had yet to learn of his final fate, Loki could only assume that he was getting some form of reprieve. Feh. Sentiments. Knowing Thor it was probably because he still felt that Loki’s soul was savable.

Sentiments.

Something that Loki hated (they brought too much pain), yet he found himself becoming a slave to them more and more each day, fueled far too much by the growing child within his body. It was a blessed curse upon him, he knew.

The child…his crimes…Thor…

In the present, Loki places a hand upon his belly, rubbing his thumb against it with an almost motherly gentleness. The child is still as small as before within him, not even a few months of age, considering how much magic it had cost to suppress the pregnancy. It would take much longer than what those humans are conditioned to. Nine months? Maybe twice that, though Loki knew little of Jotun pregnancies other than that males could also conceive young (one could figure out how he learned that little bit of information). Perhaps he could get his hands on a book or something, anything to give him a bit more insight on what was happening to his body.

Several more days pass.

Loki’s current living arrangements were akin to what his…old chambers looked, when he was living in Asgard as a prince instead of a war criminal. It was a bittersweet reunion to old sights familiar, eyes glowering each and every detail with a growing wetness in his eyes. Yes, it had almost been as if the room he had been staying in for almost three days WAS the very room he had grown in, had slept in with fickle childish desires no farther than playing a simple prank in the common room.

It took Loki a full day to realize that it really was his old chambers. Not a lookalike. Where he had assumed a trick lay behind everything presented to him, he found there was none. Though they kept his vision blinded upon every move from room to room, it was still a bit embarrassing that it took him so long to figure it out. Loki had assumed there would always be deception.

But his room was untouched and unchanged. 

Nothing within its walls had been moved or altered. He had been gone for well over a year, and yet it looked as if it had been kept clean, not even a single one of the books on his bookshelf out of place. There was still an evident nick in the wood at the underside of the bed, on that one night when a young him and Thor were sent sprawling beneath the bed, completely sure that huge evil mean frost giants were going to get them (oh the painful irony). He could recall how his head had painfully thumped against the wood, hard enough that it left an evident mark. How Thor was sent into a flurry of concern when young Loki had started to bawl out of pain, or even how the older brother had held him and cooed him until the pain was nothing more than a dull throbbing.

Or even the time when he ‘accidentally’ stole a pair of old steel swords from the kingdom’s armory, so he and his older golden brother could wage fake fights around in the privacy of his large chambers, swinging around the dulled objects until Loki had toppled off-balance, letting the sword slip from his fingers to fly into the opposite wall. Nobody seemed to have bothered covering the slightly deep, obvious slash mark on the wall since.

What kind of mournful shame was it, to have the past shoved into his face like a roaring laughter. _This is what you left behind Loki. This is what you left behind in your childish pursuit of revenge_. Loki didn’t frequently care to dwell on the thoughts of his doings over the last year or so, but there, nearly a week past coming ‘home’ he was being absorbed back into it again. In some sad, almost sickening way, he could look about his room, and feel as if he had never once left.

What a horrible trick it was, surely. That had been Odin’s entire plan the whole time? Guilt trip the very man who had opened a hell-bringing war (however short) upon the weak human race? Oh yes, cause him to crack open before swooping in to further torment him.

Nobody had given the man any information on how his ‘trial’ (if he may have called it that) was spurring along upon the mouths and ears of the highest Asgardian ranks. Nothing. The best that Loki had learned was the mere information that he wasn’t going to be put to death, and such information was merely hersay from whispers, spoken from guard to guard that changed shifts watching at his door.

Then again, the aspect that he was sleeping in his own, old room again could have been a bit of a hint.

It was an honest surprise to the dark god.

Maybe they thought he had the ability to be saved.

Maybe they even thought that he still had the same heart as before, tucked somewhere in the shadowed corners of his dotted, stained soul.

Loki was, and still is sure that there is nothing left to him anymore.

Nothing at all in his mind, heart, or body. Nothing that hasn’t already been claimed by the gnawing darkness, not already been hurt and pulled apart by the constant torment of his thoughts. There was nothing left to save, no matter how much he himself would will it so. The past was written, and sins committed.

It was (is, will always be) as he had said it before, too late to change.

* * *

“I’m bored,” Loki says with distain, tapping at the door with a growing impatient finger. He gets little response, unless one bothers to count soft chuckling a response worthy of his time.

Loki has been in the same room-his room-for yet another week. Things, if he is plain to say, has gotten a lot….better. He gets very little in the sense of information, yet people in Asgard seem to be pulling him back into the normal way of life again. It is….as if nothing had happened.

It only makes him feel even worse. It was one thing to commit such agony, but in a painful sense of irony the lack of reprimand or punishment only made him feel worse about his crimes.

* * *

Loki’s friends came by a day ago. All of them.

Volstagg. Hogun. Fandral. Sif. All of them. Some had tears in their eyes, unshed, but not bothering to hide that they held them. Others looked upon Loki with begrudging acceptance, before pulling him into the hardiest of hugs (Loki recalls that it might have been Volstagg, but he had been too occupied with the sound of Sif’s voice to bother).

She, the female warrior long having made a reputation of her incredible aptitude for being tough, being one of the only females Loki had known to keep a grave wound aplenty, and still manage not so much as to wince in torment.

And she was in tears. They were not of sadness. Neither were they of joy. They were tears of unending anger, all pounding upon Loki’s mind and ears without mercy as she screeched on. How Loki had hurt everybody. How he had abandoned all of them, leaving his family (though as much as Loki insisted, he wasn’t anybody’s REAL family, Sif merely slapped him) all behind. They had mourned, had missed him, had searched long and far across the realms until with a begrudging and weak will, Odin had called off the fruitless search. The woman went on further on how his disappearance had hurt Frigga, how she had cried herself to fits night after night, wondering and frightened what had happened to her son.

Then Sif said, plainly, that Loki had hurt Thor the most. She didn’t give him any information further on the topic, as they all had been called out of the room before she managed to get another angry syllable out from her lips. But Loki knew, knew then, and still knows that he had hurt Thor.

In the few, brief times that Loki manages to see Thor, his older brother, he sees the hurt and pain hidden so swiftly behind his glorious blue eyes. He hadn’t, and still doesn’t need Sif to explain the pain. He sees it. Sometimes Loki still does, even when Thor isn’t in the room. That face, so normally happy and joyous to look at when Thor was filled with pride from doing something or another, is instead seemingly always hiding that deep, moral pain that Loki knew has to do with him. His crimes.

Thor has only come to see Loki three times (always to give him the exact same information; He is to be allowed out of confinement soon, though Loki has yet to see such merciful results), and each time seems to be more painful than the last.

The last time Thor came, it nearly brought tears to Loki’s eyes.

Sentiment. Guilt. Regret. It is driving him to hell, pushing Loki into a never-ending plunge of darkness and regret. Regret for what he had done, what he had allowed to happen.

Twice.

* * *

“And I shall repeat, I’m BORED.” Loki knocks on the door of his chambers another time, his knuckles rapping on metal with more force than before. Yet again, nothing was his response other than an airy laughter. What is this? Some form of humorous excitement for them? Loki huffs a breath of air once, twice, halfway from a third before he decides to sit again on his bed. The covers are pushed to one side, leaving the milkiness of the sheets open for his eyes to shadow over. As inviting as it is, he doesn’t care to sleep more. He has gotten his fair share of sleeping.

He lies back onto the bed anyways, having nothing better to do than to simply look up onto the ceiling and count the number of shapes that he catches with his emerald orbs.

There is a cloud (too normal, boring even), then the god slowly keens upon the sight of a small furry animal that the humans had cooed so greatly over (he believes it was called a…Nyan? No, that was part of some joke he had heard. A cat; yes, that’s it, a cat). Pretty soon his hand is raised to the air and he’s tracing about the shapes with an idle finger against emptiness, watching lightly as they take shape in his mind.

Time goes by; he’s not quite sure for how long. The guards shift twice, at least, and the air within his room is suddenly interrupted by noise upon the third.

Loki look’s to the side to notice how the space of his doorway is suddenly occupied by a body. A tall, built body that stands with limp arms at his sides, and a face filled with a combination of joy and that same, familiar sadness.

Thor.

Loki feels himself quickly shift to sit up, eyes instantly drawing towards the other god’s face as he nears him, step by step. Thor’s face smiles (it’s slightly forced of a look), and he merely looks down at Loki as the shorter brother sits upon the bed.

“….Father has made the choice,” He finally says, voice creeping into a soft whisper that Loki hasn’t heard him speak in for a long, long time. The last time he has heard such softness was upon the day that Thor had been stripped of his powers and banished to earth.

Loki hums slowly, as if trying to make out the hidden meaning within his brother’s words. “What kind? I hope that, given how much it’s taken, that I’m not to die?” Thor’s eyes almost immediately open wide upon the mention, looking as if he has to hold himself back from reaching out to grab Loki by the shoulders and shake him out of such a gruesome, untrue notion. Instead, Thor adjusts his body again, crossing his arms firmly over that bulky chest of his, covered with the metal of armor he always wears.

“N-no. He…he has elected to give you back most of the privileges that you once had before….leaving.” Thor was chosing his words carefully, not able to keep his eyes looking into Loki’s as he continued on with such meaningless, surprising words (all that was taking Loki by surprise, yet wasn’t at the same time). “…We missed you, brother. Missed you horribly.”

“I know,” Loki quickly interrupts, absolutely assured with himself that he wouldn’t be able to handle yet another speech about how badly his leaving hurt his friends and family. It would merely break the damn holding back his filling, guilty emotions. “Leave me not with sentiment, brother. You know I….I don’t believe in such. What has farther decided besides?” He is surprised that he bothers to still call Odin father. But Thor doesn’t react to that as Loki believes he would, and instead merely hums.

“…Nothing else, brother, I….”

“Then why are you still here?” Loki’s cutting tone was worse than he craves it to be, seemingly hitting more than its mark when Thor flinches. The trickster takes a moment to breath, before letting his voice continue with a great deal more softness to it. “Why….are you still bothering to help me? I am beyond help.” Loki knows it so in his heart. It has long since been blackened by his sins, like a single piece of charcoal long since done with its use to burn.

But Thor doesn’t respond at first. A minute passes. Two minutes. Loki blinks lightly and slowly turns his eyes over to return his gaze at Thor.

The blonde god was crying. His damn has broken, letting lose all the sadness that Loki has seen time and time again upon the man’s visits, short as they were.

Then Loki heard the words that absolutely broke his heart into a million shattered pieces.

“Whose child is it, brother?”


	3. Chapter 3

They are itchy, the metal cuffs on Loki's wrists. It hurt, but is nothing worse than what Loki has already dealt with along the lines of pain (mental or physical). For the most part they rub his hands to raw soreness, but little more than that from one day to the next. They were for the most part fairly fitted to his wrists, just snug enough so he couldn’t attempt to pull them off physically as break them off magically. They could easily be ignored for the most part, but they were rather annoying when he slept. Loki nearly hit himself in the face the first few nights with them on his wrists.

But they were still better than the collar. It would have been far more shameful to walk (however bound to) Asgard with a thick collar sticking out with its magical embellishments and charms places upon it to keep his own muffed down.

Loki already receives enough stares and looks from the people around him on the days he goes out, each one looking on with their own level of confusion, hate, and sometimes simple curiosity. The collar would have only made it worse.

No matter the announcements that Odin had echoed about around every corner of their sacred home, Loki still feels as if there is nothing but resent that people hold for him. Nothing in the air but a constant hate, and, if he was lucky, some might feel pity. 

Feh. Pity. It is just as bad as the scorching hate against his mind and body, maybe even worse than it in some ways. At least with hate, Loki can simply push it away, ignore it. But with pity, no, he cannot do anything more than try to pretend it doesn’t exist for him.

It’s always still there. People who look at him with a soft, almost muted sympathy, even if he doesn’t deserve it.

Loki is standing at the balcony of his room, staring out to the vastness of the kingdom he has been given the ability to walk through again with freedom, of course with rules having been applied (not that he honestly cares. Considering what Loki had assumed his fate, anything is better). He finds little meaning in walking about Asgard. Where he was able to find a sprinkle of want to stride aimlessly across the gardens and roads for a time, now he cannot even find that. 

His room is still lined with books, from spells (the ones he was allowed to keep), history, myth and lore. With the hours that he has free, Loki finds himself reading them again. It doesn’t matter if he had already memorized each and every one of them at one time or another in his childhood. Loki simply doesn’t want to leave his room. Because doing so would mean he would have to face Thor again, face his father in person instead the hearsay and passing messages from the guards and friends.

Friends. Loki even wondered if that was the right label for them. They were close to Thor, surely so, but he wasn’t entirely keen or sure if the affections were entirely offered to him as well. 

They still come to visit him from time to time, each trying to get him out of the room. ‘Come,’ they try to tell him each time. ‘Come and forget your self-worry. Your family has forgiven you; let things be as they once were.’

But Loki knows, hands gripping upon the hard marble railing; things could never be as they were. It doesn’t matter how much people claim to have forgiven him (which he still knows is an utter lie. How could they forgive him?). Things would cease being as before. He can no longer look upon the kingdom with the same feeling of joy as he had once as a child, curiosity abound with life and meaning. No longer could he feel free enough to walk the streets, with only the looks of mixed anger, confusion, rage and intolerance greeting him.

Everyone knew what he had done, and no one, not even himself, would allow that to disappear into forgotten history. And that was, and is still, why Loki knows they are all lying. He had killed so many, taken the innocent lives of beings below him, powerless, unable to more than scream and struggle with their weak little bodies and skittering eyes. Yet, Asgard chose to take him back in, chose not to kill him, and instead give him back the partial freedom he had once reveled in.

He doesn’t know how such a mercy, such a sickly-merciful kindness existed. Surely All-Father had more in mind, something horrible, painful, and agonizing to punish him with. Didn’t he? He must of, he had to. The logic simply didn’t work right in how simple forgiveness would work for him.

After a time from learning his freedom (partial as it was) Loki simply decided to let it be. Fine. He could be free, free with restrictions, with clamps still squeezing his wrists with their metal bite. He didn’t care any longer; he had simply no reason to care.

He lost all of it when he betrayed his brother. Betrayed him in the most intimate of ways. Sometimes, Loki didn’t even like to admit it all to himself, what had happened, and other times still he couldn’t stop thinking about it. The memories were still there, brushing against his mind like a dark shadow, a teasing torment.   
He could never forget what he had done, what had happened, what had become of such a mistake.

The setting sun is bright in the sky, making everything it touches with its golden sunlight seem heavenly and warm. How it gracefully smooths over the white buildings and homes, how it covers them all with golden light, make them sing with a peace that Loki hadn’t ever seen in his short time on Midgard. There, the sunset was killed and cut upon by lights, artificial and annoying.

But on Asgard, everything seems right. Seems…almost perfect. Oh how Loki recalls times as a child, watching upon the setting body in the sky with a pulled mouth of a smile, lips probably still sticky with sauce from dessert that he would have scarfed down minutes after getting it. So anxious was he as a child to watch the sun each day, see how it lowered in the sky until taken by the far mountains, cleaving its golden light with lush moonlight above him.

It was one of the things that inspired his magic, the setting sun. Golden warmth giving way to the moon and its dark, mysterious beauty.

Time had soon taught him why he loved the moon so much, enjoyed its gentle coolness against his skin, the soft light it shown upon the world around him.

And time had also taught him to hate the same reason. It was the very reason that pushed him away from the people he had once loved, people he had once thought to have loved him. They claim that they do, but Loki knows. He knows they lie; all of them. Even Thor.

The god merely blinks to himself when the sun dives below the mountains, watching with nothing but blank interest when there is nothing in the sky but stars and the moon. There are no clouds that he sees, yet everything above is hazy with thought. Though of everything and nothing at the same time. Thought of Thor, Father, Mother, friends, family, sentiment and guilt.

Too much thought, Loki knows, yet his mind can’t seem to let any of it slip away, let any of it go into the abyss of forgetting. It is as if fate itself is laughing at him. Laughing clearly at all of his mistakes and misgivings, no matter how small any has been in his life. Some he doesn’t bother to care about, walking slowly away from the balcony.

But some he does. Some Loki cares very much about.

A hesitant, almost shaking hand lays itself against his clothed stomach, nothing so much as a tiny bump making it bulge against his fingers and palm. It would be a while yet before he would start showing anything at all. And until then, Loki doesn’t have to feel pained about much.

That is, only if you count so little pain upon the constant knowledge that Thor knows. He knows. The little dirty secret that Loki thinks he can keep from everyone else (which, thank Valhala, Thor hadn’t said or spoken of such to them. It is only he who knows). The golden-haired thundergod has not yet seen Loki since before, since that grave argument between them.

Each had screamed at the other, though one held more confusion and pain than the former. Thor had demanded Loki tell him why, how, WHO? He had screamed and accused of tormenting things, things that Loki had never before heard his brother roar with, even when they were children, and Thor’s temper was so easy to mess with. He seemed livid and alive with pure rage upon the mere fact that Loki had been holding in another life within his body. His eyes were spilling with tears, nearly begging for answers.

But Loki didn’t give him any. He couldn’t. On the very verge of a breakdown himself, Loki didn’t say anything in response to his brother’s words, accusations or questions.

Then Thor had told him, with a growl and pain to every word, that All-Father had freed him.

 

You are again home, brother. You are back where you belong. You are….with your family again.

 

And then the thunder god had just as quickly stormed out of the room, tanned face painted with tears, while Loki only sat on the bed. Sat with wet tears of his own stinging at his eyes, while he could only sob and clutch at his belly.

His baby, little, precious, innocent baby. It was a curse, a blessing, everything and more. He loved it, he hated it, he wished that it never was conceived.

But now, shaking hand placed on his stomach, Loki doesn’t know what he can do. Telling All-Father would surely yield no good results now, as his one hope of gaining freedom has already been given to him. Telling him the fact might yield even further doubt, and perhaps would call to reason the story of the child’s conception.

Thor hasn’t seen him, hasn’t bothered to come to his room ever since that one night between them.

It was all Loki can do not to dwell on the sight of his brother’s tainted face, stinging and red with tears, his voice broken into sobbing begs as he asks. ‘Brother, who’s child is it? Whom had you taken to bed, whom had you allowed to hear your cries of pleasure and love?’

Oh Thor. Oh brother, brother mine. Loki has to push back tears again as he shakingly takes his hand away from his stomach, turning instead to lay down upon the softness of the bed. He stares up at the ceiling after pulling off his outer clothes, eyes skittering across the rough texture to match up shapes and forms again as he seemed to do so often.

With the sound of Thor’s voice stinging through his mind, Loki holds a hand over his soft lips, trying to keep back the soft sob of mutual pain in the present that comes from it. Brother. Accusation was laced over every word as he remembered, only Thor’s blue, confused eyes filled with shocked anger looking into the younger god’s soul.

Whom was it that you loved, brother? Whom took you and marked you as theirs?  
The words rattled through Loki’s form. No, no, forget them; let them pass through with nothing attached, nothing weighing them over an already pained soul. Yet Loki couldn’t hold a single word back as it washed through his memory, soon forcing sob after sob of pain from his lips.

Regret, guilt, and absolute agony welled from every pore of his pale body.

It was even more painful because he couldn’t tell Thor. He couldn’t allow himself then, or now even, to breakdown into tears and tell him everything. Everything that the…the thick headed idiot couldn’t see, couldn’t remember between them.

It was a mistake the first time.

The first time when they were barely men, just out of the time of awkward words and emotions clinging to their bodies and minds. Just beyond the time of denial, to a time when it couldn’t be held back any longer.

The first time had been on the grassy hill beyond the kingdom boundaries. The flowers had been sweet, colorful, lush with life and love. The moon above their bodies had been shining full and bright with a heavenly glow, painting over Thor’s body especially with a loveliness that Loki even now couldn’t forget. How it had washed over every strong curve of his body, how it wrapped around him just as his arms had wrapped around Loki, holding the smaller with a protective strength that Loki has never found again.

 

They had made love on that hill, deep in the fields of flowers and neverending moonlight.

And it had been a mistake. Loki came to realize it when he had learned of his difference. When he had learned that his life was a lie. Everything was a lie. His family, friends, everything, lies.

And so he had taken an attempt upon vengeance. Childish, but attempted still.

And time upon time later he was here, in his bed, sobbing out the lost memories of mistakes and pain amongst the soft sheets below his face, soaking up every tear.

There had been a second mistake made. One that only Loki could remember, one that he only allowed himself to remember.

It was horror for him to sit there on the bed as Thor roared at him, demanding the truth.

Who did the baby belong to brother? Whom did you make love to?

And now, sobbing, crying, curling up into a tight ball of pain and guilt, Loki still knows he can't tell him.

Can’t answer each question as he wanted to. But it was a mistake. A mistake that Loki should have never made, never felt tempted to make. And because of it, because of how he tried to half-hide it from his brother, from everyone, it only caused nothing but a ripping pain to flare through his soul.

Whose baby is it Loki?

It’s yours, brother mine;

It’s yours.


	4. Chapter 4

The sun feels almost foreign on the pale skin, what little there is to fall upon. Loki is covered up with his seeming normal garb. His long black jacket curls down the length of his arms, barely allowing just the tips of his slender fingers to poke through into vision.

“Remind me,” The man begins in a light spat of sound from his pale lips, head covered with a dark hood from his thick jacket (a modification only recently placed when Sif decided to drag him outside of his room for the first time in weeks). He grumbles once and tries to pull the hood further over his face, as if trying to hide from the bright sun that spills out around him, but the cloth complains in the fact that it couldn’t be pulled any further over his face. “Why exactly have you in purpose for dragging me out here?”

Sif rolls her eyes as she walks beside him, feet lightly clicking against the firm white stone of the walkroad through the gardens surrounding the All-Father’s home and castle. They are alone. The Warriors Three is off upon their own duties, leaving Sif seemingly the only of Loki’s friends to take the useless time to try and pull him from his room. After a moment she scoffs and crosses her thin arms, peering back at Loki with a genuine look of curiosity.

“I had thought that some sun might finally burn sense into your heart.”

“My heart has already been burned, but not by pitiful ‘sense’ as you so claim.” Loki feels himself wince again at the brightness of the star above, how it almost painfully glinted against his sensitive skin, so long having been used to the darkness of the outer realms and space, lost in dark clouds of misery and regret. The castle looms on in its golden glow behind their walking forms, almost as if to gloat before Loki of its true pristine over his bastard birth and raising in Odin’s hand. Feh. The All-Father and his horribly weak will. Loki doesn’t understand still why he had been allowed so much freedom so early after the crimes he had committed, but has not argued against them in any way through the seemingly endless days.

With a light growl against the soft wind on his cheek, Loki steps onward until he passes Sif and continues to walk past the overhanging limb of the old tree where he and the others had played when they were little. He spares it as little thought or memory as he does the small ants underneath his feet, which he tries so very to crush. Midgardians and their simple ways, their sharp tongues, their….their minds and wills and hearts and-

Emotions. Memories. Feelings.

Loki stops for a moment as he reaches the shadow of the old tree above his head, allowing himself just a simple moment to look up and see how the branch sags, how the leaves have started to wither upon the mighty tree before him. He does not look away. Not even when the lady warrior walks up slow and gentle behind him, a hand soon finding its way to lay upon the man’s shoulder.

“There is more in your heart than you give yourself credit for, Loki,” Sif tries with a soft voice, a gentle attempt to speak, but Loki is quick to pull his body away from hers. It is almost instinctual, the primal sense to cower and yank himself away from any sort of physical contact; it is one that Loki has taught himself in the years away from hom-….Asgard. It is something that he has only forced himself to learn for the sheer need of it. But the woman is quick, almost as if she had predicted his movement, and speaks firmly. “Whatever ill feelings you hold, please do not hold them in silence.”

“You know naught of any silence this realm has offered me,” Loki growls lightly, poisonously, his eyes turned only towards the old tree. “I only recall the sting of pain.” The bark is old and dark, years of live having drained it of the ability to seemingly keep itself together. Like how Loki had seen galaxies fall apart in glorious eruption, the tree too is dying. The tree that he and Thor had climbed upon as young children, the very one where they had sat upon its long spiraling branches and told eachother the most darkest of their secrets until the sun came up again.

Loki recalls, in his ignoring of Sif’s words (she is speaking about Odin now, something about how the old man has loved him in the entire time Loki was gone, but he isn’t paying much attention), Loki begins to remember that one night on the tree. The night where the wind was cold and his brother’s arm, wrapped around his shoulders in a more-than-brotherly hold was so very warm. Warm and soft.

There had been words. Lots of them, back and forth. Words of dark secrets, jokes, happiness and joy. Words that Loki suddenly doesn’t want to remember at all.

His mind focuses again onto Sif and her continuing voice (the woman can really keep going, can’t she?). He is back on Asgard again. An adult; no longer a senseless, naïve teenager lost in the ways of simple affection and spiteful fondness. After listening to her speak on and on longer, Loki interrupts. His mind flares sharply.

“And what is the meaning of all this drabble you spout off to me? What am I to care if ‘father’ loves me anymore? He was the one to send me into that dark abyss in the first place.” There is detectable sadness in Loki’s voice as he speaks, barely noticing how it began to break and shatter into a vulnerable confusion. “What am I to care if m-…if mother misses me? What…am I to care…?”

The emotions again, too much to bare, all pressing and pushing at Loki’s brain like hard driving nails. It hurts, hurts so much. The tree sways against the breeze above his head, and then suddenly there are words with the driving pain. Words of secrets. Words of longing. Words of love.

Love.

His heart suddenly breaks.

Before Loki can realize what is going on, Sif’s arms are around him. He is crying. When had he started crying? When had he finally broken with the immeasurable pain? As much in his frozen movements as the small god tries, he simply couldn’t find it. For the first time in Loki’s life he cannot think, cannot fathom why his brain, his heart, his body all hurts so very much. There is so much pushing on him, everything like a shattering waterfall against the fragile thin hold that he tries to keep upon his sanity.

He doesn’t hug her back. Even if he had desired to, Loki is sure that his arms don’t work. They are frozen to his sides, unable to do more than feel the gentle twitch of his fingertips, jolting in realization for every little tear the god finds that is rolling down his cheeks.

And Sif is speaking again. She is cooing and hushing and embracing her warm arms around Loki. They are not Thor’s arms, but they are warm and soft. They are loving. They are…they are the arms of a friend.

“Loki,” The woman whispers in his ear after a moment. She doesn’t bother to wipe his tears away, but the mere sound of concern and affection in her gentle tone is enough to have the same effect on the man. He listens at last, taking not a breath to speak. He just listens. “You are loved. You’re actions are hated, mistrusted, but you yourself are loved.”

It is those words that make the man’s mind reel back. The wormhole. The falling. The sound of his father’s voice. No. Thor hanging on the edge of the broken bifrost, trying to pull Loki back up. The look of pain that settled over the golden god’s face like a stone when he told him his plans.

He had just wanted to be Thor’s equal. He just wanted to make his family proud, to overcome the realization and handicap he held simply due to his birth.

And then he remembers everything earlier. The trip to Jotunheim. The truth. How he watched when his big brother was banished to Midgard. The pain, the treachery, the betrayal. The lies. The truth. Everything and nothing in the very same instance.

But Loki is here now, on Asgard. He isn’t falling, he isn’t being pulled apart, torn atom by atom in the lonely darkness. He isn’t being taken into scrap and barely rolled back together again. He is….he is on Asgard. He is not surrounded by darkness, but light. And he can feel that light against his skin feel how it glitters down from above his body in the sky.

And suddenly, the sunlight doesn’t seem to burn any longer. If anything, Loki feels as if it…if it feels nice. Warm even, a feeling that the trickster hasn’t felt in a genuine long while, having been covered and hidden away by cold wrenching guilt and pain.

He is warm. And he is home.

Home. Asgard. He is…yes, he is home.

Sif slowly loosens her grip around Loki’s body, and for the first time he doesn’t try to quicken the parting of contact by stepping away, jerking his body from her hold as if he had been burned. Instead, he merely looks up at her as they part. Their eyes meet for a moment in the cool breeze of the simple air. Leaves fall to the ground from the tree above, gentle and quiet.

“You are loved,” she repeats again, one of her gentle hands lingering upon Loki’s shoulder. “You are so foolish, so selfish not to see that, outside your childish jealousy.” Her words move mountains.

It had taken a lot to allow himself to realize it, if at least a little (a start was better than not starting at all). He is…loved. To what extent, and by whom, he has still to understand completely. There is still pain deep in Loki’s soul and heart, he knows that greatly as he and Sif begin walking down the brick pathway again. And there are sins, painted and permanent, but there is a sense of redemption in kind.

But he thinks, with a soft smile on his lips, face turned away from the woman so she couldn’t see; the pain is just a little bit less. The man places a hand cautiously upon his stomach, still flat and unshowing.

Yes. That pain was just that little bit less.

He is…loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter is really short, but I just kept writing it and suddenly found a really nice cutting point, ya know? ;n; It's more of an inner look at not only Loki's time and inner thought about his past, something to really make you guys think. Loki was never truly evil, in my mind at least. 
> 
> Granted, he did horrible things, even Odin, Sif, Thor and the other's know that. But he did it out of childish emotions, jealousy and such. And I wanted to use this chapter as a take on Loki's thoughts of what he had done, sort of a redeeming chapter really. I mean, a person can feel guilty, and Loki isn't above the fact at all.


	5. Chapter 5

It is funny sometimes what the truth can hold for a person. Happiness. Regret. Pain. Relief. Sometimes it yields nothing, so telling it doesn't affect barely the breeze against your skin, or the sun glittering in the sky. Sometimes it scarcely receives a twitch of your lips into a grin, finding nothing but mild amusement at the finding you hadn't known prior. Sometimes the truth is nothing.

But there are times where it is everything. 

The truth holds as much power as one can give it, and Loki knows he has given the sadistic force more than he had to keep. His life. His reason to be. Such a force had long taken it and ripped it to pieces, letting the fragments of truth fall before the man's feet. And it was only then in the shattered pieces of truth that it revealed itself to him.

Though Loki has been 'home' (as so many, most specifically Sif tries to insinuate) for almost two months now, not a soul had so much spoken of what had occurred in the hours before he 'left' Asgard.

That is what they call it, from the petty commoners to Sif herself. He left. Loki left Asgard. Yet it seems they always fail to mention the betrayal that had lead him to such a thing, the pain of a thousand needles that punctured his heart as the man had so tried to grow pride in his dear father's heart.

Father. I could have done it for you, for...for all of us.

The voice that responds to the memory is as cold as it is warm, filled with a rejection and realization that Loki still cannot simply let himself forget it.

No, Loki. Eyes of Odin stare straight into him, his soul bare and weak to the pain that fills it. No Loki. Your trails were naught. Your heart is small, broken and shattered, taped together simply by time and emotion.

Loki hasn't gone to see Odin just yet. His mother, whom admittedly visits him every few days (usually with several more books in arms), tries to convince him otherwise. She asks for him to speak with Odin.

He can never bring himself to, no matter how much anyone else speaks of it to him. Sif is the only person who so tries to convince him of such an action, but Loki cannot. He cannot bring himself before a man who had fabricated a life-long lie that Loki had been forced to live. He cannot do such a thing just yet, to bow before the very person whom he had tried to make proud, whom had still looked at him with scorn until the last moment.

Was that wrong of him to want? Was it wrong for him to desire a closure, a mere understanding of why his entire youth had been a shallow fabrication?

It would be almost as painful as meeting with Thor again, who had taken seemingly every instance to stay far away from the raven-haired god as he could. So outside the occasional visit of Frigga, it left Loki with Sif for the majority of his time. Though obviously still in anger upon Loki's action, she is the only warrior who bothers to see him every morning, the same time every day, her dark eyes filled with a confusing mixture of hate and sympathy.

For whatever reason he deserves such an emotion placed upon him, sympathy. He still wonders why she of all people have it for him. Why Sif, of every soul in Asgard, was giving him this undeniable sense of tolerance.

Most of Loki's free time is spent in his chambers, sitting upon his bed with a book in his lap, while his mind allows himself to read upon the thin lines of text and let them weave amongst the corners of his fitful mind. He tries not to think about anything other than a brewing of potion, a casting of a spell (no matter how much he would not be able to bother practicing such; the cuffs still on his wrists prevented that). 

But it is enough to keep his mind from dripping in thought again. From the isolation, both of his brother and father, Loki is sure that if he allows so much as a moment more of free and idle thought, his mind surely would explode in agony.

He feels hurt. He feels betrayed. He feels guilty. He feels as if he is entitled to more than a pat on the back and a wave of his crimes. You are home, they had said in indirect ways (from letting him free to welcoming him back in Asgard), but Loki has not yet felt satisfied.

He didn’t ask to be pardoned from the sins he committed. It was as if there had been some unspoken bargain he couldn’t control. The return of his freedom for the silence of the truth that started it all in the first place. If anything, Loki felt shorthanded by his guilt, and furious for both his cowardice to speak with anyone on the topic.

Upon one sunny day in his room, Loki again is reading. This time it is a children's book, filled with fairy tales, battles, and happy endings. Something he surely will never have. It is a book he had always taken to in his youth, as he enjoyed the stories it told, and he still does. Battles with brave warriors, adventures with rightful meaning, people with a place in their lives to be; they have a place in which they feel as if they belong.

After finishing the final word on the page, Loki cannot keep himself reading it. How a golden warrior had laid battle over the frosting hills of Jotunheim. How the man's hair was as bright as the sun, his eyes as blue as the deepest ocean, his body as strong as the ox and lithe as a cat. How the Jotuns fell beneath his blade in groups of dozens, until the warrior stood upon his pedestal of glory and honor. For he had slain the monsters of the land, oh so obviously.

The small man closed it without another though, already finding a dabbing of tears in his eyes simply from the description of the man. It made his mind think, and Loki had found that is a dangerous thing. Thinking brought memories. It brings his regret to what he had done, the betrayal he had both caused and felt by his own brother (whom he is certain hates him. Thor seemingly cannot bare the sight of Loki now, always going more than his way to keep out of the same room in the rare chance that Loki wishes to leave his own chambers). 

Loki is torn inside. Like a doll that he had once seen a Midgardian girl holding in the streets of that one country, bustling and large. Germany. Yes, Loki remembers seeing a young girl with a small doll. It had a poor body, material old and worn, stiches easily looking as if they had been ripped apart and sewn back together more than once. One eye was missing, and its arm was half torn.

The dark god feels like that doll, ripped apart and poorly stitched back together. Stuffing within his cloth body missing in huge chunks, leaving little more than bits of void and inner confusion battling through his thoughts.

The air around him is cold. He cannot think. His body quickly is pushed from the bed, feet clipping against the floor as he starts to walk.

Loki is sorry. He cannot begin to think how much regret is in his heart for what he had done. He knows it was wrong, it was horribly wrong. Though he had been power and revenge-crazed, the blood he spilt was just as bright, and just as permanent. 

The lives he took, the hearts he broke,  
the pain in Thor's eyes.

They had forgiven him, to an extent. They laws lain and the memories brushed away with a swipe of a hand. And Loki feels only as a small child, lost in the world of his own regret, and his own confusion, without a force of reprimand. It almost feels inherently wrong, the lack of reprimand. His freedom for a continued secret, it seemed. He felt he was just as much wronged as the thousands he had killed.

Loki wants to beg, to plead, to bear knowledge of why his incredible heartbreak could be, but he is now brave enough only to leave his chambers for food, and little more. Pitiful.

So Loki walks to the balcony again of his room, and gently leans his body over the railing. The cold metal presses against his arms, easily moving through the material of his jacket, but Loki does not care. He is fairly well with the cold, and it only serves to remind him of the truth.

One arm instinctively moves to press against his stomach, as if to ensure that it's still there. That little life-force, barely bubbling under the surface of his emotional turmoil. And it's there, still there, growing into a baby. His baby. Thor's baby.

How can he ever tell Thor of the truth? Loki cannot even begin to answer his own question, for there is suddenly someone behind him. He turns quickly, almost instinctively raising his shoulders and hands up in defense, his mind pulling into a mode of protect, protect, protect.

But it is only Sif. She stands with her arms crossed, her eyes staring upon Loki's form in a deep, though unreadable expression. It takes a few long seconds before the man finally feels the flaring reaction die off into a subtle bitterness.

".....I do not wish to speak to anyone right now, Sif," Loki says with a slow sigh, turning back onto the balcony. His arm does not so much as twitch towards his stomach.

He hears the woman snort lightly upon his words. "And that is why you will never heal." There is silence, but soon there is the sound of light footsteps as she moves beside him, her own body leaning upon the golden metal railing. His face turns to look at her in an almost angered curiosity, for he honestly does not want to deal with another person. His confusing thoughts are more than enough to push him to the brink of his sanity.

"Heal? I hardly think that is the right word. I know already that I have done wrong, Sif, and I already feel the pitiful sense of regret for it." He brings a clammy palm to his face, flesh pressing at his closed eyes in a vain trying to make the flashing colors of tears move from him. He feels them welling up, and tries his best to keep them forced down. “I have spent two full moons knowing well that I’ve killed more midgardians than you have killed warriors in battle. I know I’m stained with the sins, and it doesn’t do anyone good to remind me of it when I’m already near-mad as it is.” 

Sif blinks once and seems hesitant, almost unwilling, but lays a gentle hand on his back. It leaves Loki stiff to the contact of her against him, but he doesn't brush it off as she had thought he would.

"That is not what makes you turn away from your family now. There is more to it than that, Loki, I have seen it in your eyes." There is no question to her voice, nor any sense that she wants a response out of him. "...All I ask is for you to speak with Odin. Hearts cannot be healed unless you fit the pieces back together."

There is silence. Loki almost shudders. His hand pulls away from his face and almost turns to look at her with shock. Does she know? The truth? The very lie that made his mind shake so?

Her head nods in the unspoken question. "Yes, I know." The air ticks by their eyes with the passing of time, slow and silent in the light of the sun. ".....Everyone knows of your true birth. Odin spoke of it after you....left."

It is then that the man pulls away from her touch, brain trying to piece it all together. Father had told of the truth to everyone? Hadn't he felt shame for Loki, a Jotun outcast, as a son? 

What am I, father?  
You are my son. 

The words had been simple, been short. Loki reels back and shakes his head, wanting to be rid of them again, before the tears can finally spill. It is simply too much to take. 

But Sif is insistent and firm, one hand holding onto Loki's shuddering shoulder. 

"Why?" Loki asks at last, hands over his face again. "Why did he bother to say? People would have scorned him for having...for having a heathen as myself in his golden family. The son of his enemy in his very own home."

There is a bitter edge to his words, but Loki doesn't speak further. He takes a deep breath of air to steady his feet on the ground. Beside him there is an almost broken sigh, a voice seeming nearly torn between emotion as the woman finally responds.

"He did it to explain," she starts slowly, as if to let Loki take it in piece by piece. The air brushes past them both, making Loki's clothes flutter in the force of it. "The people did not understand what had happened. Some took it with confusion. Others had hatred. But everyone knew what you did. When they came to the All-Father…” She stops for a few minutes and sighs, pulling a hand through her hair, as if she has to find the right words. “He finally told everyone why you had done it. He spoke in pain of his mistake-"

"Mistake of having me as a pitiful excuse of a son," Loki cuts in with his own spiteful words, already sensing where it was going. Yes, his fault, all his fault. There was only so much that Loki could feel guilt for. “Why did he bother to save me anyway? Why didn’t he just tell them that I was a monster? Considering the hatred for Jotuns, I don’t see there would have been much political difference in the statement.” 

But Sif growls at him and forces her hands at his shoulders, pressing the man backwards until his back collides painfully with the wall just a few feet from the doorway to his room. The force shocks the man, breath stopping for a moment as Sif lays one quick slap across his cheek.

Time seems to stop for a moment.

The sound echoes through the air. Loki is left with a look of sudden shock upon the hit, frozen and face turned to the side from the collision of her palm on his pale cheek. There is heavy panting from the woman, but not that of simple exhaustion. He could hear it, the tinge of anger, the sound of emotional strain.

"Have you no sense in your brain? Can you not see it, Loki?" Her question falls on idle ears, but she continues. "Your father apologized to all of Asgard for lying to you. He held tears in his eyes because he thought he had sent you to your death! And you stand here still in your woe and self-pity?" And finally she pulls away from the man and allow him to relax, his taller body leaning back against the wall. “You are still such a child! You stand here and speak of your regret and betrayal, yet you choose not to go to your father and make amends!”

There is a painful sting in his cheek where her strike had hit, but Loki is attuned more to her words than the distraction against his skin.

Green eyes met brown ones with great intensity. Pain and comfort. Realization and truth.

"Your father loves you. Frigga loves you. You are right to feel as you do, for I would be the same if my father had kept such a secret from me." She looks honest and true, eyes and face pulling into a look that Loki could only call as pleading. "But look past your need for bitter reasoning and woe. Please just let your father and mother see you again, let them explain their sorrows and apologies to you as they had done to all else of Asgard!" The voice of pleading is stronger, the power within each word more than before. Loki can tell the woman before him is holding back some pain or another, but her words are honest and true. 

He looks away, unable to take the sight of her, unable to hear of his father, of anything.

"....you still hold anger for me," Loki blinks once and stares at the ground. "I can see it in your eyes as you have seen such in mine. You are still very angry for what I have done."

At this Sif starts to speak, but breaks her words. The air once more is silent between the man and woman, the only sound the wind rushing through the air, making Loki's clothes flap harder in it's constant force.

But it is only after it dies down again that Sif speaks. She is calm, quite, her voice soft in Loki's ear as she whispers. "....I do. Just as you feel angry for your slight from All-Father, I feel anger for what you have done to Asgard, for the people you left behind. I feel a rage in that you have hurt Thor, whom is as close to me as any brother.” Loki winces at the sound of her contained, restrained anger. Of course, Sif is just as angry as the rest of them. 

She sighs, and looks at Loki with a sense of indescribable calmness. “…But I know you feel grief, and for that I cannot be angry forever. I know you deserve forgiveness Loki, for the crimes you have committed. While it will take long to earn it back in all of us, it is still there for you." She takes a small step towards the man (he stiffens against her touch again, still unused to so much contact for such a long time of loneliness). "But your father deserves forgiveness too. Let yourself forgive him Loki, as Asgard begins to forgive you. You know the guilt hidden in your heart, know its sting and it's pain. 

And that is as your father feels, I know. The same that your brother feels, your mother. But you cannot keep avoiding them. As I had said; a heart cannot heal unless they are placed back together."

It takes a long time for the other to let himself think of her words, her incredible honesty with him. She is angry. Yet there is forgiveness already in her voice. She could berate him, could scream at him (as she very well once had upon their first meeting again), could cut him up and tell Loki of the incredible agony he very well knew he had placed upon his brother, his people. 

Yet....yet she forgave. 

She was angry and hurt, but Sif forgave him. Father forgave him, even so much as to make a public apology to all of Asgard. Father....father knew that he had hurt Loki and actually apologized, wanted to heal the hurt between them. His son. Loki. His.....his son.

The sudden wave of emotion runs through the man again, just as it had before. But he cannot cry. There had been too many tears before, too many running down his cheeks to allow him the luxury now. Instead he bites his bottom lip so hard he's almost sure to break the skin, and nods. As hurt as he feels, as broken and betrayed as he has become, Loki finally agrees. If Sif can forgive him, he can do the same. 

For his father, his mother.....

For Thor. For the father (unknowing) of his unborn child still just a fetus in his belly, Loki finally decides he can forgive. 

Well, start to forgive. There are many painful questions that need answers, many tears to be shed and screams to be heard in his pent-up sense of pain, but Loki knows that if Asgard can take in his crimes, his betrayal and forgive, he can very well attempt the same.

Sif sees the change in Loki's posture, from a bitter freeze to a softer, almost pliant calmness about him, and then finally nods herself. 

"I shall see father soon," his words spill out like dripping water from his lips, shivering against every thought, as if he was planning his visit to the devil himself. The anxiety within his heart was great. What if he couldn't bring himself to forgive the All-Father? What if, no matter how much Loki yearned for normalcy, he will not find peace in Odin's apology? "But for right now I am tired from so much talk, I....I am not used to so many plaguing emotions." He is honest and vulnerable; heart again splayed open like a raw nerve, ready to be struck dead by Sif's warrior anger. But she does something Loki didn't expect. 

She smiled. 

"It is to be expected," she said finally, the smile never once fading. "Though I cannot ever forget what you have done, Loki, I understand the pain you have been through, and can forgive. Thor...has always loved you, and now I can understand why he forgives you so, and has always forgiven you." There is nothing more she says, nothing to explain her meaning, her sense, her reasoning to even say such words to Loki, but he doesn't ask for an explanation either. Sometimes words are better left unquestioned.

She looks about ready to say something further against the soft wind of the air, but a new voice cuts through the gentle calmness that Loki and Sif had created between them. It isn't a word, nor a sentence, but a sound that catches the attention of both forms on the balcony.

Loki blinks and turns his tired and worn eyes to the open door of his chamber.

His heart nearly stops, breath catching painfully in his throat at the sight of the golden hair, the bright blue eyes, filled with a subdued pain that had never been given explanation or healing.

Thor stands with his arms at his sides. He presses his lips together once, staring upon the sight of Sif and Loki standing together on the balcony. Loki can only wonder what Thor thinks of the scene, thinks now of his unanswered question of the baby. 

But he doesn't say anything on the subject. Instead, he looks at Sif, then towards Loki.

"Loki....." He starts, voice cut off when green orbs meet blue ones. Time seems to stop between them, letting memories of laughter and giggles flow through the air. Memories of games, of love, of pleasure. And from Thor's eyes only, memories of betrayal, recent and still dripping of its deep blood. Loki winces from the sight of it. Thor doesn't know the truth. Loki doesn't say anything (such words still needed to be thought upon, decided if he should or should not tell him of the memories he had stolen so many months ago). Instead the golden god continues with his original goal, speaking in a low, contained voice.

"Father wishes to see you." And Loki nods. Sooner than he had expected, but he was nonetheless not surprised. 

Pain, questions, and a hurt trust awaited him, but Loki took it with a strength and pride as he was soon led out the door, Thor in stride beside him.

Having left Sif with a seeming, knowing smile as she stands at the balcony once more. Her dark hair blows over her shoulder, and she hums.

The breeze is gentle and cool this morning.


	6. Chapter 6

Have you ever a time in your life when things are so bad you can barely stand it? A time when, no matter what you try to do, things just never seem to work in your favor? 

Life can be like that, confusing and unreadable, and all you can do is just accept and move with what happens. And some people just have a way of working with it. Some people can do it easily, able to accept things as they are and continue life just as good as it was before. They morn the bad, and celebrate the good.

Some people can just do that. Some people can flow through life without problem or issue.

But not Loki.

Loki isn't one of those people whom can just accept problems. He is always one to fight it, to reject the truth and accept his own, how it should be instead of what it really is. It comes from years of denial, practice really; years of trying to make himself believe what he wants. That he is a good son. That he always does the very best that he can do for his family, his…friends, the people closest to him (few that remains, even now). 

He always fights.

But, there are these rare, little times that the same man simply….gives up. He understands what he's fighting against and merely accepts it. Sometimes it's for the better. And sometimes even, it's for the worst. It's when things finally become too much to handle. 

Thor. Sif. Mother and Father. His leave, his arrival, his baby.

Ah yes, his baby.

Loki can't take the overwhelming emotions that swirl in his head, not all at once, and simply gives up (seemingly more often than naught in recent days). It makes him shake and shudder with confusion, makes his eyes fill with tears, his voice choke deep in his throat.

Loki is sure that this is one of those times. He isn't fooled by the emptiness of the halls (they were abound with numbness), or the warmth of the air (it was foreshadowing the cold of his coming loneliness). This is it. His mother and father. He is actually going to see them, after years of being alone. Years of despair, of anger, of hate and depressing coldness nipping at his bones. Years of fighting the truth, trying to tell himself they didn't want him, that he hadn't given up everything for a childish jest.

Loki feels like at last the pains of the past will be put to sleep, if only a small bit. Even a fraction will help his heart; help calm the swirling emotion keeping such a tight grasp over his sanity. Maybe he'll finally understand and give up his self-pitying sadness. Maybe. Or at the same time, perhaps the meeting will only yield more questions, more confusion, and an everlasting sense of betrayal and agony from what Odin had done to him. 

Loki severely hopes (almost prays to Valhala) for the former. He wants to be happy. He wants to be loved. He wants to forgive, to be forgiven, to go back to how things always used to be. And if Odin wanted as much as he for the very same, Loki is willing to risk his sanity and overwhelmed brain and heart to achieve it.

To know the truth. Or, even better yet, to understand why Odin had never told him of the truth. To know if he was loved as much as Thor was, even now, after so many crimes, so much death. Could Loki still be loved as he always dreamed for?

To feel the warmth of his mother and father loving him again. To feel a sense of acceptance once and for all, to push away what doubts there are about his birth, his upbringing, about everything and nothing in between.

But then Loki is reminded of Thor. Thor, the man walking beside him.

Thor, the man who was once his lover. 

The utterly unknowing father of his child growing oh-so-innocently within his stomach. 

The man he lied to.

Sif told him to buck up and be strong. Loki remembers her harsh but honest words, accompanied easily by the constant stinging on his cheek from how hard she had slapped him. Yes, she truly is a strong woman. Loki cannot deny her worth any longer from how well she honestly helped him. How she forgave him. She is….a friend. An odd and incredibly unseen friend, but one nonetheless. Loki will always be grateful for the companionship she offered him.

And she is right. Loki can get through this. For her, for his parents. For Thor. And it is that, the simple hope and prayer that keeps Loki from crying again, keeping him strong and silent and undyingly calm as he walks beside his elder brother. 

Towards the throne room. 

Perhaps one day even, Thor might learn to forgive him, for all that he had done in hurt against the golden god. 

Perhaps one day he'll tell Thor the truth.

One day.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-

There is a horrid silence that twists and turns between he and Thor as they walk together. It modestly resounds through every little passage and hall, in every open window and out every cracked door. It is a silence that is empty and hallow, brittle and far too easy to break. A mere word can shatter the silence to pieces between them and open the wounds that were all-too fresh in both men's minds. 

Loki notices though that Thor continues to peer at him as they gently continue through the grand hall, getting closer and closer to the very source that threatens to make Loki's hands shake. It is soft and subtle, but the thin god is more than able to catch the light shifting of blue eyes turning towards him, the barest twitch of a toned face moving in its own pained curiosity.

If there was not such a thick cloud of emotion and anxiety over Loki, he is sure that he would have been pushing down the urge to smile. Thor has always been so incredibly open in his feelings, his curiosity, his questions. As much as the elder deity always likened to say that he was a man of great maturity, Loki always thought otherwise. He was in so many ways just like an innocent child. So open, so honest, and so very easy to hurt.

The simple sound of their boots clicks against the hard floor as they both walk, one foot in front of the other. 

Simple, muted reminders of how few words they manage to speak in the overwhelming emotion. 

But there is otherwise only silence spewing between their bodies, filling the air and keeping them floating on a thin line of sanity. Neither man can think of what to say. Occasionally Thor opens his lips and turns towards Loki, but after a moment he seems to find a thought and closes his mouth again, leaving them in nothing but emptiness once more. Loki isn't sure if the silence is a good thing anymore. When before he yearned for nothing but silence, finding his own miserable existence hiding away in his room, he now knows it will never be enough to heal his pain (along with the pain of so many others, as Sif so kindly had reminded him with the slap across the cheek).

In some ways, the younger of the two mentally screams for Thor to be the first to speak. To break the silence; but he does not. They turn down the next left, one part closer to the main room where Loki knows his father and mother to be waiting for him. The room where Odin would be sitting, curt and calculating upon the golden throne of Asgard, where Loki and Thor had been brought to countless times in their youth when something of their activities had gone awry. Pranks, punishments, joys and celebrations between them. 

So many years ago.

The walls are as bright and colorful as they always had been since Loki can remember, adorned with gold, silver, and abound with simple but lovely detail. Some of the windows down the side hall of the palace are open, letting in bounding shafts of light. As they walk past each one, Loki silently feels himself sigh and almost hum against the warmth as it hits him.

It's soft and comfortable, making the dark cloth of his armored jacket almost thrum with its billowing heat. For the first time in a while, Loki finds himself actually pulling up a soft twitch of lips from the sensation across his arms and shoulders. He has never been so pleasured by sunlight and warmth hitting him, never been so calmed and so relieved when the long streams of golden light flickered down upon him from the tall windows.

The sigh from his pale lips turns Thor's attention to him once more, his steps actually faltering from their one-two pattern and cycle. As much as he wants to hide it away, Loki cannot force the smile to hide from his brother's blue orbs. This creates a very obvious and very soft grunt of curiosity rumble through Thor's lips.

Then finally, a word. Several in fact, towards Loki, from Thor.

"…It has been long since I've seen you smile, brother." Though the tone is flat and seemingly uninterested, Loki rolls his eyes for how open and obvious the inner warmth is. It's a thin paper covering that anyone could see right through. But the man doesn't bother to poke fun or point out the true emotion welling behind the words. He doesn't have that right anymore, not after hurting his brother like that so recent in a few nights ago.

Not after he lied to Thor.

So instead, Loki clears his throat and looks ahead, his arms lightly swaying at the level of his hips, like limp vines on a tree. "It has been long since I've something to smile about." There is a grunt of a response beside him, and it's only a mental instinction that makes Loki turn his head. The duet sound of footsteps stops clicking against the hard floor when the two brothers finally meet eyes.

Thor looks firm and serious. His mouth is in a firm frown, set like a hard cement upon his face, unmoving, infallible. The man does not even seem to blink. He stands with incredible strength, not moving at all, not even to cross his arms in a subtle sense of disapproval for how Loki has been treating and avoiding him for several days past.

And the younger brother barely finds himself breathing at the stare. His eyes bore into those soft, yet entirely strong blue ones. They were passionate as he can see, flickering with a deep fire that bit and jumps upon every word, every thought, every beat of his heart. But the fire is hungry, showing it's slow burning need for a sound from Loki's mouth. He starts to speak (attempting moreso than anything else), and he sees it as clear as a bright day in Asgard's gardens.

Demand. Betrayal. Curiosity. Question.

Thor has not forgotten what had been argued almost a week ago. Though he did not mean to, Loki suddenly had a hand pressing at his stomach, as if to ensure the child resting within is still fine, is still real, and is still there. He notices Thor twitch a brow in soft confusion, which only further powered his stance.

There is a fitful and devouring silence between the brothers. Loki doesn't take his hand away from his stomach. Thor finally moves to speak.

"I know you will never speak this to father, but I hope that I at least get some right." The golden god does not entirely sound angry (at least, not as angry as he had been before). Instead, he simply sounds confused, scared even. Loki is more than able to detect the familiar twitch in his tone, the telltale sign whenever Thor is nervous or frightened about what he speaks of. "I…I do not understand things like this at all. I don't wish to frighten you in asking, but I do not want to lose you from my heart, or me from yours Loki."

Loki feels entirely sick, his stomach twisting and insides churning. He has made Thor feel like that. He has lied to him, has not spoken to him the truth of the child. He has made Thor feel as if their love has been shattered.

Thor actually believes he had lain with another to bear a child. The realization (as much as the man had been fighting it before) is sick. More or less, it's making Loki sick.

As much as he wants to simply give it up and scream bloody truth, the shorter forces the bile of self-hatred down his throat and merely allows Thor to speak.

"I merely wish to speak to you about this brother, before we seek mother and fath-"

"There is nothing to speak about!" Loki surprises himself with how incredibly loud he is, teeth gnashing and eyes flaring with overreaction. But he cannot take the words back, and instead clicks his heal against the floor and treads onward with them. "I do not know why you have such curiosity in your head any longer for me, Thor. Whatever happened in my time away-" there is more than a hissing sound upon the word. "-is my business alone. It matters not with you in the slightest!"

Loki is barely allowed so much as a moment to feel pride in the power of his own words. He is taken suddenly by the throat, pushed back into one of the walls so strongly that he's mentally grateful that there is a soft curtain there to cushion the motion. Powerful or not, Loki is sure that Thor uses enough force to break something or another.

"Do you not understand!?" As with Sif and her strong hand across his pale cheek, Loki suddenly turns his head facing away when the unseen barrage of anger and words hit him. His face twitches, quivers almost (he hadn't seen such an explosion from Thor). "Do you not get this at all brother?! It's as much my business as it is yours!" His hand tightens the hold around Loki's thin throat, forcing a sudden choke from the other. It makes his hands fly to Thor's, suddenly growing more and more fevered to pull him away.

It's fear. Raw and powerful fear that coats through Loki's emerald eyes. Fear that he has taken one step too far with his brother's restraint, one step too far with his prideful and lying words. He suddenly feels his hands start to shake in the effort, though he knows it's entirely useless to even try and fight the other man.

But Thor is filled with seeming rage. He doesn't push harder upon Loki's throat or body, merely keeping him pressed to the wall and unable to move. "…I loved you, Loki. I hope you can still remember that after so long. …I loved you so much, and I still do." Nothing in the mortal world would ever, no matter how hard he tries, make him forget about that sound. That sound, thick and filled with wetness. It was one of the first and few actual sobs he has heard in his lifetime of loving Thor, of knowing him to cry and openly weep in front of only a person he cared deeply about.

The man is even surer of his sickness. There is harsh stinging bile at his throat, words begging to be forgiven simply clawing at his tongue to be spoken. But Loki cannot speak them. He cannot. Instead he merely whimpers in pain from how little air he breaths, but even then the taller Thor does not relent for him. 

"What did they do to you Loki?" Thor is suddenly crying (though more like Loki has not bothered to look over until he was). There are tears spilling down his cheeks, making those clear blue eyes suddenly sizzle into flameless misery. They are spilling with concern and affection, making Loki feel as if he was about to throw up. 

He does not deserve the feeling of being loved by Thor. He does not deserve to feel the other's strong arms around his body, caring for him as if the Tesseract had never been found. As if he had never left home. As if-

But suddenly that is all that Loki feels. No longer pressed against the wall, the man falls silent and frozen when Thor is wrapped around him, nose rubbing into the side of his neck like he always had done when they were secretive lovers.

Loki can't even breath.

"Please brother. What did they do to you? Those…those creatures, what did they do to you?" The sobbing is getting even more frantic, almost fueled solely by fear and confusion. "I want to help, brother. I…I want you to let me help you." Thor sounds like he's choking on his words, almost trying to force them out between each deep gasp for breath. It only makes Loki's heart drop further in his stomach.

He can't believe it. He simply cannot believe that Thor is holding him. Thor is kissing his neck. Thor is begging to help. Begging and confessing his love all over again. Loki simply cannot believe it.

His body is limp in Thor's firm hold, not leaning against him, but not pulling away in any instance. He merely stands. He mere is. All the time where he assumed betrayal in Thor's eyes, was it merely concern? When he had pitied himself in seeing rage, was it instead simple and misunderstood affection?

Loki sputters for a few moments, lips unable to move properly when Thor holds him tighter to his broad, warm body. It is a sensation like the man hasn't felt in a good, long time. The sensation of contact and skin, pressing against him, touching him, pulling him close. The trickster can barely think, let alone speak. "…I have thought that you hate me." Even to him it sounds stupid and misplaced, a mere child's question where there were so many other's he could have asked. From his father, to his past, to even the devotion that Thor undoubtedly held when Loki was gone. He could have asked all of it.

But he didn't.

Thor's sudden chuckle is completely off-kilter. It throws Loki's mind for a loop and back, making him shake his head and stare at Thor as if he had just came back from the dead. And even then, Thor does not stop laughing. Though there are obvious tears spilling from his eyes, the man doesn't stop his booming voice from flittering and carousing through the grand golden halls around them. Hands tighten around Loki's body, hands finding their way to press into his lower back.

"Brother," he says quickly, moving his face once more to the pale neck before him to nose across the skin. The gentle and intimate touch almost make's Loki squeak. It has been so long since someone has touched him like that. It feels so very nice. "I cannot lie and say that I have not felt ill, thinking of your words, your absence and…." The baby, Loki knows from the sudden hesitation. "….surprises. But you are my little brother, my…my love. You always have been. I cannot hate you forever, not when you have returned to us!" The hysteric joy is almost painful for the smaller to hear, but he understands how much he deserves it. Thor smiles bright and wide. "It is only time before things can finally be as they once were. You will believe me when you speak to mother and father, you will know that we have missed you and love you." Thor noses against Loki's neck again, but the man quickly pulls himself away.

Loki almost feels disgusted with himself. Thor still loves him so very, very much, and Loki is doing all he can to keep such news from the other's realization. He wants to keep Thor from his child, from their child. After all this time, Thor….he still wanted Loki, Loki's love. He assumed that the child was in mistake and from unwanted passion. 

The younger isn't even sure what he can feel besides simple and utter disgust towards his own self-pity. It wasn't himself he had needed to feel such apology and misery for. It was Thor. Thor, the man who still followed him like a puppy, who still loves him after all that has happened, in the face that Loki (in the other's mind) had been with another lover since they were painfully separated.

The golden god seems to notice Loki's silence, and his smile merely grows soft and warm. "…I still love you as I had before, Loki." The other still doesn't respond to such emotional, such open words. Loki finds his lips parted and his brows pulled in an overwhelming sense of relief, of sadness, of confusion and incredible guilt.

Silence fills the room and halls, fills their eyes with mutual hope and tension.

"…I love you too brother."

The tension is broken. The tears finally spill. They roll down Loki's cheeks. He cannot breathe again, hands shaking and mind completely pulled around with emotion. Everything is a blur around him; everything is suddenly clear and entirely blackened with further promise of words. It is all suddenly so…clean. As if water has poured over the small god's frame, washing away the doubts, the pain, the confusion and misery, he can see again. Suddenly mother and father are a faraway thought.

But Loki starts to feel his body shake when it slowly becomes apparent; suddenly everything is a faraway thought. His brain is swirling with too much. From love to joy, guilt and misery, the growing noise in his brain is finally too much for Loki to take in one simple day. Mother and father. Talking to mother and father.

Thor. Yes, he loves Thor, Thor loves him. The baby (oh god the baby), how might Loki tell him of it? Would he speak the truth? Of course he would; right? Loki will tell Thor of the truth? But Thor might hate him for stealing it away, the memory and the pleasure, lying to him about it for so long? But of course talking to Odin and mother is first thought, first need. Father is sorry…..Loki needs to hear the truth….father….Laufeyson…baby…..Thor…..

Suddenly everything begins to dot his vision with black.

And then Loki falls. His mind strained and heart beating like a rabbit from the veracious fox, Loki's mind finally falls into a silent calm, and into his brother's catching arms before there is nothing but black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, I know what you all are thinking. You hate me :U Yup, for one chapter more you all will have to wait to see when Loki finally speaks to his father. But COME ON. I was personally fighting with it myself through the entire argument between Loki and Thor. Good lord, can you believe the emotional turmoil that he's holding in that brain of his? I mean, I don't think you all are surprised that he simply passed out from all of the strain (plus an ongoing pregnancy :U).
> 
> I hope I wrote out the entire moment between Thor and Loki well enough. I really didn't want to make it seemed pushed along, but I really wanted them to have a moment where they could finally come to terms with one another. They still love eachother, entirely and utterly. The only thing that Loki has to break to Thor is the truth of the child.
> 
> I can only imagine what might happen then. Will Thor be happy? Cheated? Angry? Who knows.


	7. Chapter 7

_“Brother, it is alright,” A deep, soft voice whispered into Loki’s ear, making the smaller form shiver from the gentle puff of warm breath as it graces over his skin. “Relax. I have you, I have you Loki.” There was nothing but love and heat in his brother’s words, a sense of simple calm that could sooth even his greatest of fears deep in the misery of night. It was enough to keep away the demons since they were little kids._

_But it did more than enough to help Loki calm down, forcing his once shivering body to lie still and pliant underneath Thor’s, soft grass caressing pale skin. Naked flesh brushed and pressed together in idle moments as the larger sibling adjusted himself to compensate for Loki’s comfort, making sure that his thin, pale legs were wrapped around his waist, and the small hands clasping at his broad shoulders. But even then there were soft whimpers from quivering lips. Loki keened and arched his back beneath the mighty Thor. There was just so much of him to take. The god was sure it was just too much. He felt a rolling of tears down his cheek, and thrashed his head back and forth._

_“It still hurts, brother, I- I can’t take it, please, I can’t-” Loki almost sounded panicked as he began to squirm, body writhing beneath the mammoth of his brother. Thor growled once and firmly pushed his weight down again, making the other still once more. He cut through Loki’s following whimper with even more heated words, words of love and passion._

_“You can, baby brother. Just….relax. It’s alright. Let me hold you, and you will be alright.” Thor slowly rolled them over to lay on their sides, so his arms could wrap around Loki and hold him close, instead of having to keep his body from crushing the small god beside him. “I promise. You’ll be alright.” Their chests pressed tight, enough for each of them to feel the small ripples of muscles from writhing and breathing. Loki didn’t again try to pull from Thor, even with the fact that the pain still stung at the back of his brain. Thor promised him. And the smaller sibling knew he never broke a promise, childish as it was._

_With a patience of a high lord, Thor waited until his lover allowed him to continue with their lovemaking, the permission coming in a short and jerky nod. It was obvious that Loki was still feeling some pain, but with a sloppy, wet kiss, Thor silently promised to steal it all away._

_With one soft, almost testing thrust of his hips, Thor leaned forward and began his gentle, familiar butterfly kisses alone Loki’s jutting collarbone. Even with such small movements, the smaller form was already shivering in his own pleasure of it, feeling Thor deep within his wanting, and needing body. So much and not enough all in the same moment._

_“Th-…Thor….” Loki gasped out lightly, his face turning a deeper flush of red. In the gentle moonlight above, the older brother couldn’t help but lay in awe in the beauty of his younger brother. How his pale skin nearly glowed, how his dark raven hair lay spread in a halo around his face. Oh, how those green eyes looked at him, wide and filled with lust, with love and need. Thor knew that he could never resist that look of him, the feeling of Loki’s tightness constricting around his throbbing member. Ah yes, it was all so perfect. “….brother…! A-Ah brother! R-right there!” Of course, his sweet little moans were always so kind in addition._

_Thor felt a grin as he tried to repeat the motion again for Loki, feeling the almost carnal pleasure from how their hips ground together with every thrust, how he had to pull Loki’s legs a bit wider apart for every little millimeter of depth within his tight heat. His breath quickened with arousal and excitement._

_Loki was getting so very close already. His face was flushed with lust and shame, knowing that he was undoubtly going to finish far too quickly to satisfy the both of them. No! The night was simply too early! He tried to hold his body back for as long as he could, hands going as far to simply yank at grass before he finally started pulling up thick clods of dirt with his digging digits into the earth. So close…!_

_“Thor, T-Thor! I-I’m going to…!” He keened and arched, legs almost starting to cramp from how much he wanted it, needed it, his brother throbbing and as deep as he could thrust within his small form. But the golden god didn’t so much as slow a bit, not even a slight hesitation to keep him from his pounding pattern. Closer, closer still, until the flames of release were finally beginning to lick at the small man’s stomach. His insides were curling into themselves, his toes and fingers and everything else about him completely spasming before finally-_

__”Loki!” The voice of Thor rings out suddenly, strong and powerful. It is of no mistake, though Loki is more than confused as to why he hears it in such a way. It’s more a declaration of concern than lust and finish. But then slow realization begins to come for the man. He is no longer in the deep Asgardian forests and hills, no longer naked and laying against the gentle green grass. He is no longer pressed against Thor’s unclothed body, no longer feeling the pleasures and final relief of desperate carnal release. No, he is far, far from it.

In a bed, with sheets pulled over him, clothed and oddly warm. Thor is sitting next to him at the bedside, hands held together just in front of his stomach, with blue eyes staring down at Loki with an expression of unmistakable worry. Loki takes a moment to let it all click within his brain, and soon enough he is groaning in pain.

“Brother, do not move so. You are still weak,” Thor regards the other with soft, gentle words. One of his strong hands is suddenly upon Loki’s chest, pressing him down once more to the bed when he tried to stir.

“What happened?” Loki inquires with a soft wince of his features, hands quickly moving from underneath the bed sheets, cool and crisp upon his skin, to grab Thor’s wrist that holds him firm on the bed. Though a light headache makes his movements jostle, Loki cannot help but turn his head from one side to the other. “Where am I?”

“Fret not brother,” Thor calmly rumbles, taking his hand away from his younger sibling’s chest and allowing him to sit up. “I took you to my bedchambers after you collapsed. You tossed in your sleep, but I ensured you did not fall ill.” Thor’s voice sounds as if that had been one of his very first worries.

Loki is about to say something further as he looks around (almost breathless at the mere sight of Thor’s huge, lavish room filled with red, gold, and seemingly everything velvet; from bed to drapes and everything in between), but his voice is stopped suddenly in his throat. The dream. In hurried gasps he turns to Thor, cheeks flaring red, but the blonde Asgardian is quick to cover his mouth with a warm palm and amused smile on his lips.

“I am pleased to know you haven’t forgotten certain times between us, brother,” He takes away his hand from Loki’s face and moves to caress a cheek with firm and gentle knuckles brushing against his skin. Ah. So Loki’s worst fears has been met, meaning so obviously that he moaned in his slumber, cried out for his brother in the most intimate of ways. 

Almost all too quickly, Loki pulls away and lays on the bed once more. He is on his side, facing away from Thor, though he can still hear that damnable smirk on the thunderer’s face as Thor speaks. “You were always one for privacy in such things.” Even though in Thor’s mind, they had only made love once.

“Of course I have been, you insufferable oaf!” Loki all but snarls in reply. Hands eagerly grab for the edges of the vast, almost too-big blanket so he can pull it over himself, hide himself from the shame that is coloring his cheeks. Thor has obviously not forgotten that time between them, that cool night in the Asgardian fields when they were barely old enough to be deemed men.

Thor does nothing but tut to himself, and Loki can hear it as the elder sibling pushes himself up from the chair. Thick boots gently tap against the floor as he walks about, one side of the massive room to the other, though for what reason Loki is keeping himself from caring. It matters not in any form; bad enough it is that he’s in Thor’s room, laying on his massive bed and curled (almost too warmly) within his blankets. But Thor tuts again, and Loki almost slowly pulls down the blanket.

Before his eyes is Thor, standing off to the side of the bed Loki is facing. Loki blinks in surprise, not having heard his brother walk to the side of the bed, and almost looks like he’s going to turn about.

“Brother,” The blonde god stops him with his low voice. Loki hesitates for a moment, but eventually flickers his green eyes to the other’s face. It is held in calm expression, peaceful, soft and almost too serene for what Thor’s obviously been through. Loki cannot look into his eyes for long before he is peering down onto the bed, body propped halfway up and on his elbow. 

For once between them there is a silence. It is thick and stifling, filling the air with nothing but the briefest of thoughts. 

The baby.

Instantly Loki’s attention is drawn away from Thor’s eyes, breaking the moment between them. His free hand moves to press on his belly, gently, as if it was a mere instinction to ensure it was still there within his belly. Flaring like a soft light, a candle even, barely visible in the darkness around it.

Loki doesn’t even try to hide the action from Thor. His brother knows already, so Loki can’t bring himself to hurt Thor more on the subject. 

If he did, there would be no chance for them to heal, even if what they already had was iffy at best.

“….How far along?” Loki has expected the question to come eventually, the key being where he and Thor would have been at the time. The small god parts his lips, hesitates, and finally speaks.

“Not much. Enough for my magic to pick up on its energy.”

“And you’ve been suppressing this pregnancy.” It’s not a question.

Loki holds back a gasp from his mouth as he instantly turns to his brother, almost utterly taken by the assumption. The very right, correct assumption. Loki is almost hesitant to reply.

“How did you know?” Loki cannot recall Thor ever understanding the minute details of magic or his kind (his true kind; Jotuns). There should have been no honest way that Thor may know such a thing. Loki blinks and peers deeply at Thor, who is looking back with an equally deep gaze. “You don’t know much of magic, Thor, and you do not know conception times for Frost Giants.”

“I do not.” Thor’s tone is almost unbelievably calm, tempered, without a single hint of anger or betrayal lacing it. He must have been thinking much of it in the last two weeks. 

Is that how long Loki has been home? The god inwardly groans and tries to hold back whatever flooding that tries to crash against his mind. So much has happened. So much he has experienced, learned, spoke and understood.

Loki is pushing his face into his hands when he hears Thor speak once more, and this time the older sibling is sitting on the bed beside Loki.

“The man with eyes of a hawk spoke to me of it. He came to me, and….he spoke of your troubles when he was with you.” Thor is reaching his hand out. His face is almost frightened, hand outstretched and over Loki’s belly like a child. He can’t seem to bring himself to lay his warm palm down on Loki’s stomach, but his blue eyes are almost caught in hesitation and fear, as if the mere gesture would offend or hurt Loki.

Instead, Loki looks at Thor with shocked eyes. He had known all that time. Since Clint had returned to the Avengers. He knew. Loki coughed and almost stuttered out a reply.

“I conceived the child a month after…..I left.” It is a sensitive way to put it, and one that most certainly isn’t a lie. He had _realized_ of his pregnancy a month after, caught in the darkness of the outer realms. And it was then that he instantly suppressed it, halting the growth of a child to the barest of minimums. It wouldn’t have survived had someone detected then that Loki was carrying a child.

And Thor still wanted Loki. In all that time. He still loved Loki.

The younger has to push back the guilty tears that nip at the back of his eyes, instantly curling his fingers around Thor’s wrist and pulling his hand down to Loki’s flat belly, covered with a single layer of simple clothing he had been wearing since his first day…home.

Though the small god cannot speak, the meaning of his movements is clear. 

Where Thor could have been moved into disgust and hate, betrayal and rageful contempt, he cared and missed him.

Loki knew his brother had assumed he had been given an unwanted child. Raped and hurt. And Thor still loved him, he still-he wanted to touch his belly, to feel the growing child.

Loki is moved with emotion. He doesn’t loosen his grip on his brother’s wrist, and soon Thor seems to accept his touching, fingers rubbing softly into the fabric of Loki’s clothes and stomach. “…How far have you allowed yourself to be?”

And finally, Loki regained his ability to speak. With a blink of his eyes to hold back tears, Loki manages a smile. It is small, but it is still a smile. “…A month. I lost the ability to hold the spell a few days ago. A year is long to hold back a child, whom obvious wants to grow.”

“…How long do Jotuns hold pregnancy?” Thor questions. “Er, now that your suppression spell is gone, how long will you carry the child?” Loki sighs, almost rolling his eyes at the eagerness of his brother’s yearning question. It is respectable, at least, for him to wonder.

“I do not know very well. What little I know of my people, I….it could be a year.” 

Though it is a lie that Loki cannot break, he is stifled with grateful emotion that Thor does not implore on the creation of the child. A month after he left (it seems believable enough). Thor thought it was the Chitauri. He actually thought Loki had been taken unwillingly, and he did not look as if he was going to ask anything. And Loki is going to sit there and know the truth. The truth that they had made love one time more, one time when Odin fell to slumber and Thor was on Midgard.

When he had visited and said it would be their last meeting (he could recall the pain in Thor’s eyes as they lay together, intertwined with limbs and love). Thinking it would truly be their last time, Loki had taken the memory, not knowing it would begin about such a powerful turn of events.

He didn’t know it would bring a baby. He didn’t know Thor would still love him, want him, need him. Loki would never feel the end to the guilt in such a recollection.

And now, all Thor thinks is the child was from the Chitari forcing themselves upon Loki. Bless his soul, Thor, bless it until the day he goes to Valhala. And Loki can’t even give the memory back. It is impossible. Damn it all.

_Brother, will the child be one of them?_

_Do you want to keep it?_

_Shall we tell mother and father?_

_When did this happen?_

Thor doesn’t say any such thing. Instead, the golden god looks up to Loki’s eyes with a smile. It is not bitter, it is not hateful, hurt, or angry. It is warm, soft and as gentle as his fingers are while they press and brush on Loki’s stomach.

“We shall love this child, Loki.” He speaks with nothing but joy. Loki wants to sob (he doesn’t deserve all the love Thor is so graciously giving him), but all he does is nod and smile, biting his lip to hold back words-

It is yours brother, the child is yours!

“Yes; we will love this child.” Loki blinks and finally, slowly regards the unspoken with a stuttered breath. He is in disbelieve for the capacity for love that Thor keeps in his heart. “You do not think that-”

As if there had been a sudden explosion between them, Thor is suddenly upon Loki’s mouth, pressing lips together with forceful, rash affection. He nips and laps at Loki’s pale lips for several long seconds, and Loki is left breathless as he pulls away.

“I think that you have been through too much, Loki. You….We deserve happiness. This child, whatever its parentage, deserves love. I will always be here for you, Loki. I love you to fight any Realm that comes between us. I will love this child as if it was my own.”

And it is then that Loki sobs. He cannot help it, it’s just too much. Thor. Thor and his stupid, blundering, horrible, blunt, oaf self. He gives too much and asks for nothing. He loves without asking to be loved back. He is offering to be the child’s father, thinking that it is a bastard child, while in truth it is really his. His child from a lovemaking he can’t remember.

Thor suddenly looks panicked. Why is Loki sobbing so? He blinks and stutters, offering his shoulder without hesitation for the other to lean against. He does not complain when Loki grips his hands to Thor’s shoulder, and further doesn’t wince when sharp nails bite into his skin.

“B-Brother?” He asks wildly, suddenly moving his arms to hold Loki close. “Brother, are you alright? D-Did I say wrong to you?”

Loki can’t take it anymore. He doesn’t deserve to continue hearing this unkept compassion and kindness. This capability that Thor has to make Loki love and hate him at the same time. Loki just can’t stand it any longer.

He is sure his heart will break into pieces before he even begins to show with child.

So he tears himself away from Thor’s shoulder, face mixed in a combination of fear, sadness, and unrelenting anger towards his brother for being too loving. Always too loving. Damnable Thor. Stupid Thor. 

His brother Thor. His lover Thor. Dammit.

Loki sputters to find words, both cursing and blessing the man holding him at the same time. “Thor. This child. This….this baby, it-“ He growls and closes his eyes, unable to so much as look at Thor as he tries to say it. To tell the truth would be to reveal what he had taken from Thor. To speak light onto the night Thor does not know of. “-there is something I need to speak true of for this child.”

When he opens his eyes up once more to look at Thor, he finds his brother calm. Surprisingly calm. He takes a breath, slow, then even more slowly he nods. 

“Tell me of it, brother. In past weeks, I have promised myself to be here for you, whatever you need. I know dark things have happened to you. Those…those creatures have done things to you, and I may never understand the pain you endured, but I will always listen and help you heal.”

 _Oh you idiotic brute,_ Loki thinks to himself for a moment, so grateful in that single part in time to have Thor. _You think the worst, always. You give yourself away without regard and do not stop to think that perhaps, it is never as bad as you assume._

Thor was selfless. He deserved to know the truth, no matter what might happen afterwards. He deserved to know that the child was his.

With his fingers gripping hard on his brother’s wrist, holding his hand firmly to Loki’s stomach, the god finally said the very words he had wished, and loathed in past year to say. What he had nightmares and dreams over since the first night he felt a second little soul within his body, kicking at his mind.

“Thor, I have held a lie. My final lie to you that I can’t keep any longer,” And Thor only looks even more confused, concern showing in the edges of his expression. “…you will not hate me?” _For keeping it from you. For taking away your memory, your child. For hurting you more than what I have been hurt._

“Never,” His brother is quick to answer, eyes flaring bright with an insistence Loki could never find elsewhere. A stubborn rash nature that he loved in Thor, he endeared in no one but. “I would never hate you brother. You are telling me the truth now, right? Then I find little reason to see fault, if you are honest with me now.”

Loki feels tears rolling down his cheeks. A smile pulls stubbornly at his lips, and he is staring deep into his brother’s eyes. So much he has to tell, so much he needs to speak honest for. So much.

“Thor.” Two pale hands move from holding the muscled wrist to a flat belly and instead cup the face before him. A prayer. A wish. A hope.

_”The child is yours.”_

There is silence. Thor is staring, frozen, as if the catch of information had stopped his thoughts. “…What do you say, Loki?” monotone and unreadable.

Loki takes a breath, no turning back. “It is yours. We have made love twice, brother. It was the second time in weeks before leaving that it happened. I became with child from that time of us, together.”

Thor is looking about, eyes flickering back and forth as he obviously is searching for the memory. The sight of him doing so causes a pang of regret and guilt in Loki’s chest, but he explains the fact with a small voice, while his hands drop once more to the blanket.

“Banished to Midgard. I came to you during the night-“

“And told me that it was our last meeting,” Thor finishes with a look of pure confusion. “You told me that I could never come home, but we- Loki, we did not lay toge-”

“We did,” Loki interjects with nothing but a whisper. Thor opens his mouth, nothing comes out, and Loki answers the question he so desperately wants to ask. “…I used magic to take the memory.”

“You did such?”

“Yes.”

And Thor is again in thought, leaving the younger god in a sudden cloud of emotion. “That is why I asked that you not hate me. It has been a year that I have lived with it.”

Thor is still silent. Loki is almost worried that Thor will hate him, despite his promise. Worried that he will feel as if it was stolen from him, a precious piece of his mind that he would never be able to recall.

“….brother?” Loki finally whispers in fearful question. 

Thor does not answer. He looks at Loki at last, eyes filled with…with….

Relief.

“The child is mine,” Thor marvels. He pulls Loki to his broad and warm body, repeating the words over and over. “It is mine.”

Loki cannot say he ever understood Thor’s brain in how he thought, but now is certainly a time that he almost fears for Thor’s sanity.

“Why aren’t you angry?”

“Because I love you,” Thor answers it in a way that is far too warm for Loki’s confusion. “Because I have feared that all this time, brother, that you would never know how much I love and care for you. I assumed that someone had hurt you, raped you brother, and given you a child you did not want. But instead, this child is ours!” He eagerly grabs for Loki’s hands, holding them together in his own massive paws.

“But I stole the memory of-”

“And I have forgiven you.”

Loki feels about ready to sob once more, but he is lost in the oddest feeling of bliss. Thor smiles and merely goes on to explain. “I have forgiven you for what you have done before…before I lost you. You have done wrong, you have hurt people, but I have as well. You have told lies, but so have I. And finally, we have a chance to be happy. I want nothing more than to take that chance, Loki.”

There is more silence, only not as stifling. Loki feels as if he can breathe deeper now. His heart does not ache as much, his mind no longer numb. “…I have feel nothing but guilt, Thor.”

“Why?” Thor asks warmly, leaning forward to nose Loki’s neck again, a personal weak spot he had used against his brother time and time again. “Why do you feel guilty?”

“I kept it from you.”

Thor noses him more intently, soon letting lips drag across skin. “I know now of it. That is good enough to satisfy me, brother.” _Oh you stupid, annoying, simple-minded oaf. How I love you so much for being there._ “What has been done will always be done, and no one can change it. It is no longer time to lay with guilt; now comes a time when we all can finally heal.”

“Heal?” Loki blinks in question. Thor smirks and pulls away, and soon the only sound is of few muted words outside the door; the guards walking past.

“Now there is no more pain. You are here with us, with me, and finally we can just…heal. No more anger, brother, no more guilt or pain or anything anymore. Just you and me, our family….and our baby.” He lays one hand between them, pressing softly to Loki’s stomach. 

When Loki looks at Thor, he sees more than anything before. Regardless of his words, he can still see hurt, pain, and betrayal. He knows it would take time to heal such deep wounds, regardless of what Thor tries to convince him.

But until then they can try. Try to be happy. Because there is joy in Thor’s eyes, joy and hope for what has become of their lives. Loki blinks and finally allows himself to nod, placing one soft hand over Thor’s. “Yes.”

But it is in that single moment that both men forget something. They do not seem to hear the squandering sounds outside, the click of the door, the creak. They do not take note when two silent forms walk into Thor’s room and allow the two a few moments more of their gentle peace. Instead Thor and Loki are leaning into one another for warmth and affection, two broken souls who yearn to be whole again.

But it is finally a clearing of a throat that takes their attentions from eachother. Loki and Thor pull away, their hands moving from the youngers stomach as if it was on fire, and turned their desperate eyes to see whom it was that occupied the room with them. 

The door is open (and it is almost too easy to make out the curious eyes of Fandral and Sif standing just outside, peering in with question). And, standing just in front of its partially closed doors (unknown to either brother how much of the scene they had witnessed), are their parents. Their parents. Mother and Father.

Odin and Frigga.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter. It is filled with countless feels and a blabber of words I cannot even begin to recall that I have written. I mean, I went full-on writing mode for this one. I wanted to almost give this a semi-climax for this arch of the story, second only to when Loki and Thor finally talk to Odin and Frigga, but I wanted it both to make sense and not come out so very gushy.
> 
> So, did I make it too mushy? Or is it balanced? Comments are so very well loved!


	8. Chapter 8

The air is still once more when they see that indeed, they have been caught, discovered, seen. Thor doesn’t move, and Loki- He is entirely sure that he has lost the ability to breath.

Standing there just beyond the foot of the bed, calm and complacent, and with little more than a look of curiosity was Odin. Beside him is Frigga, her face flushed red with a look of relief. It is obvious that she had been sobbing in recent times.

“Loki,” The woman says behind her hands, and she looks held back from leaping forward and embracing her son. Tearstreaks are more than evident on her face, what of it her hands are not covering. “My baby.” She takes a half step forward, but does not move any closer. Loki understands why, taking more grace into thought that…they missed him.

Standing there, his family in one room. They missed him.

“M-Mother,” Loki instinctively croaks out when he sees the red face of the older woman. And immediately, as if the sound of his voice has broken some barrier between the four of them, Frigga walks towards him with weeping eyes. She regards Thor with little more than a look, and said prince silently nods and steps off the bed in respect. 

“Loki, oh Loki you are well!” Frigga is entirely exasperated, tears freely falling from her cheeks before she can wipe them away. Her arms are instantly around the young god, pulling and holding him close to her chest without fault, and in her explosion of outcry, the blankets begin to tangle about Loki’s legs. He is once more a child in her arms, a mother holding him warm and close. And Loki cannot hold back the tears as he instantly recalls her warmth surrounding him as a child, scared and frightened through the growing woes and heartaches of growing up. Her smell, her heat, her comfort. Loki is instantly leaning against his…his mother, his caretaker, feeling as his own tears cannot be stopped.

He cares not as Odin and Thor stand off the foot of the bed, silently conversing between themselves for something or another. It is only Frigga that Loki is listening to; her soft coos of worry and relief chitter through the air.

“I had thought you dead for so long, Loki. Do you know what a mother feels when she believes she has lost her son?” The woman pulls away after a moment, instead taking hold of his pale face between her soft hands, almost forcing Loki to look into her eyes.

Guilt instantly takes him as he sees how red they are, marked with long times of grief and woe, from what he can only assume is his own fault. “I….I-I am sorry, mother,” Is all he can find words to speak, his mind simply rolling over and over again the memories. He knows what he had left Thor with, what he had left Asgard with when he had allowed himself to fall from the broken bridge. And in that time, Loki saw it as right. A stab of revenge, well deserved after all that Odin and Thor had put him through.

He thought it was right to do, a perfect way to inflict the same pain into their heart as they had done to him. A deep sting of regret ached in him now, making Loki blink as he thought of the memory. 

He hadn’t thought of his mother when he let go. He hadn’t thought of Thor’s love when he had let go. All that had been swirling in his mind, all that hate and anger, it was all he had let himself grow consumed over. To be an equal. To be respected. To be loved.

Loki holds his mother with a sudden need to feel her again, to feel her arms keeping him safe. “I am sorry, mother,” He repeats once more, another round of fresh tears on his face. He hadn’t thought about what he had really done.

From Thor’s seeming smugness to Odin’s lies, Loki thought he was doing right for his own need for revenge. To make them understand how bad they had hurt him. But never once did Loki actually think of anything further. His mind had not flickered to when Thor and he had made love together for the first time; he did not ponder on his mother’s worry, or his father’s regret and apology. He simply had not thought of it.

Revenge. Revenge for being the lesser son, the monster, the freak. 

And his mother is right here with him, holding him, proving that he had been so very, very wrong. All those lives, those powers, everything taken from a simple need for revenge, to wash away what pains Loki had taken so intimately to his cold, frozen heart.

Frigga sobs once against Loki’s cheek, then kisses him softly, as if he had always been her son (true, blood, birthed son), and hugs him once more. “We have all missed you, Loki. We have always missed you, do not doubt that. Whatever pains you believe you felt, whatever injustices you believe we had done you, just know that we have always loved you.” She pulls away at last, her arms loose around Loki’s thin frame, then softly backs away from the bed enough to allow her words to sink into his brain. Her hands cross over her front, and his mother cannot help one last bit of words before Odin walks behind her to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You have always been my baby, Loki. Always.”

Loki holds his breath, feeling even worse than he had before. Childish revenge. All it has ever been, all he has ever tried to fight through, it was all for childish, foolish revenge.

But hadn’t he some reason? Loki cannot let go of that last string of doubt in his mind, that nagging knowledge for what had started his anger and hatred in the first place.

“You had lied to me,” The pale man speaks softly, nary anything more than a thin thread of conviction in his words. “You had told me still that I was a Jotun, when all I knew them as were monsters.”

And it is Odin that responds. “Aye, Loki.” And the voice that leaves his father’s mouth is anything than what he recalls. Where Odin had been strong, powerful and filled with pride, he sounds nothing like it. The tone that warbles over the soft two words is weak. It is filled with a certain thing that Loki, never in his long years of life long before the days of manhood, had ever heard from Odin’s lips. 

Regret.

Loki slowly turns his eyes up to his father, watching as Odin looks back to him with a broken gaze. Regret. Surely he must be mistaking it. Odin was a proud king, a strong man whom never called back upon his words or thoughts, but marched onward with nothing but harsh and steel-strong assurance. And yet here is that same man before Loki, just as broken, just as hurt, and there is nothing Loki can do but blink out more tears.

“You lied to me. Where I thought I was just a jealous child yearning for his big brother’s fortune, you tell me I….I was a monster, I still _am_ a monster!” His voice hitches, and Thor looks almost ready to jump in and pull Loki into a hug (he can almost hear Thor’s voice rumbling, ‘No brother, you are not a monster; I love you.’), but it is Frigga that holds a hand back to ease her elder son to still. Loki blinks, uncaring for Thor or his mother at that one moment, and looks to Odin for a response. He gets nothing but a further hurt gaze, and for a ripple in time Loki isn’t sure if he’s feeling satisfied, or even more hurt. “I thought I was a _thing_. I-I felt like an object to you, like I was some sort of war trophy to hold above your head. Where I thought I was just a freak living in Asgard, I learn suddenly that I had reason to think that.”

More tears are falling, and Loki doesn’t so much as bring a hand up from the blankets to wipe them away. It is too late to wipe away tears, he knows. It is time for truth, for honesty,

It is time for healing.  
“I listened; night after night w-when I was little! You spoke with stories of bloody battle with the Frost Giants; you told us of how they murdered and killed with ruthless, mindless intent! And then, after believing that in all sense they were nothing but monsters, you suddenly tell me that I…that I’m not even your blood-son? That I’m a….that I’m a monster!” And suddenly Loki realizes he is shaking. His hands cannot stay still, his lips unable to keep from quivering. But he cannot stop his words any longer. 

He can finally speak. He can finally breathe. Where for almost a year his memories, his pain, his torment had been bottled into his heart, freezing it with cold anguish, Loki can finally break it open and let it bleed. He can finally let the wound bleed freely, and allow it to scab over with bitter guilt, and heal. He understood what Thor had spoken of all in that one monologing instant. To heal.

But what is more to him just now, what means nothing less than anguish, is how he can see his father’s face. He can see how Odin looks nothing but pained at every word, but he does not raise a noble hand to stop his son. Frigga has her eyes turned down, and Thor (however his brother managed to keep tame in the heat of the room, emotions swirling), stands beside a now closed door.

“…I felt worthless. After years of trying to be something in your eyes—In Asgard’s eyes….I felt worthless. I was suddenly the unwanted son, picked up like a trophy in war. Father; you made me feel worthless for all I tried to be.”

Loki breathes once, twice, letting the cold air fill his lungs before he finally feels his body turn numb. It is not a numbness that he found displeasing. It was a numbness that came with incredible relief. And then suddenly the room is silent. Frigga is no longer sobbing. Loki is no longer speaking (he is long past further words), and Thor is nothing but a pair of downcast eyes on the floor.

Odin doesn’t say a word. He merely looks at Loki, as if he is entirely lifeless, and suddenly Loki feels nothing but a flare of contempt anger, leftover, but burning bright.

“I have killed many people. I have done wrong, have allied with enemies, and have done many things you have taught Thor and I both never to succumb to-“ Loki is cut off from his mother’s sudden sobbing again, as if she can hardly take the truth, but with a gentle murmur from Thor behind her, Frigga is silent once more. Loki takes head to his mother’s sensitivity, and continues softly, “-When I felt like nothing but a scrap of dust, lost and alone in the darkness of a world I knew not where, I was given new purpose again. To steal back what I thought was mine, to take revenge on what I was so sure had been my slights. I was filled with meaning again, with a sense that somehow, my broken heart would feel whole again.”

Loki stiffens up with a near stubborn pride, back straight and head unable, unallowed to bow forward in submission to Odin, father, king, leader of whom he once was. “I have committed great crimes, and I feel nothing now but guilt for doing it, but you cannot tell me that I had no reason or meaning to do them. I-I only wanted…I only wanted….” Hold fast Loki. Hold fast to your words, your pride, what little you have left. “….I only ever wanted to be a son, a brother, a prince to be proud of.”

Silence. It seems as if everyone is holding their breath. Loki’s eyes trail with tears falling down his face. Then, in a slow, unfurling flash of need, of pain, of time-hardened anxiety, the god allows his skin to shimmer and change.

“This is what I learned what I was, all in a single second.” Loki can’t open his eyes now, because he knows what his parents and brother can see. Blue skin, shimmering and dark as it contrasts with the red blankets wrapped around him. Lighter marks curl over his cheeks, forehead and hands. “This is what I am. I don’t even know if I’m proud of it, or frightened anymore. All I do know-” he holds up a navy-blue hand in the air, and finally allows his eyes to open in what he knew was ruby brightness. “Is I can’t take any of it back. I don’t know if I’m worthless anymore or not. I just can’t tell. What am I? What am I anymore?”

He notices a movement in front of him. Loki’s ruby eyes flicker forward, and he only sees a flash of movement before he feels it.

Warmth. Pressure. Arms. Arms wrapped around him, pulling him up and on his feet. Arms holding him to an equally warm body. Arms hugging him.

Holding him.

Odin is hugging him, strong limbs keeping Loki pulled close. Loki is a Jotun, no longer hiding it away with magic, and Odin is hugging him without reserve.

And the god cannot ever in his life deny the words that he heard. They are the very same that he had heard before, a year ago, in the same context and same instance when he had learnt the truth of his life.

“You are my son, Loki.” Odin’s voice was soft and calm, still broken, but finally with a firmness that held it strong as it rumbled beside Loki’s head. “You were always, and will always be my son.” But it doesn’t do more than steal the young man’s ability to breath, to move, as he stands as limply in Odin’s hold as he had in Sif’s only a day ago (not even; had time been moving that quickly?). 

“I am sorry, my son.”

Loki is shaking. He is absolutely convulsing with though and realization. He is not dreaming. He is not making his mind flicker with insanity. He is merely standing in disbelief in his father’s arms, hearing the very words he had fought, had wished, had dreamed for long to hear. And even then, all Loki has the ability to utter when he parts his lips, is, “….w-what?”

“I am sorry. I now realize the pain I caused you for so long, even though I was trying to do it to protect you. I thought I was doing right, but it took too long before I knew it was, it had been hurting you so. I should have told you when you were younger, should….should have been a far better father than what I’ve given you, my son. And for that, I beg your forgiveness.”

Forgiveness? Odin?

“….I….I….” The god can’t even speak. He is far past words. But he is not past for tears, which are soon cascading down his cheeks and throat, making his eyes burn. “…But what of my crimes? H-How can you ask for my forgiveness wh-when I’ve done such wrong?”

Odin’s response is quick as it is firm. “Loki, we have both done wrong in past months. We have done horrible things and have hurt many people. You have learned guilt for your doings, and have earned my forgiveness. But what I have done to you has gone on longer that a mere year. I have been hurting your for many, many long years, without knowing it. I beg that you forgive me for it, my son.”

Frigga and Thor are both looking upon them, anxiously waiting for Loki’s responding words. It is time. Time for Loki to decide if after so much, if he could take back the pain, the misery, and let himself forgive his father.

And, almost surprisingly, the reply from his lips is just as fast, as sure, and as joyful as Thor had been to Loki. Just as loving as Thor was for him, loving without taking, without selfish desires.

“I forgive you, father.” The shaking god brings his hands up to wrap around Odin in turn, his voice growing into a wet sob of emotions and blubbered sympathies, long since past the point to care for its pitiful show. “I forgive you.” Thor is smiling, beaming with a sense of gratitude and relief, and it mirrors how Frigga also looked. Her eyes were still spilling tears, but her mouth was pulled in a smile. 

And finally, now Loki, now Thor, now everyone that had been hurt;

Now they can heal. It will never be the same, never without memories of people they all had hurt, but it is a start that none of the people in that room can ever ask for again. At least they can heal.

And Loki?

Loki can finally, happily breathe. 

**End of Arch One.**


End file.
